Books Burn Badly

Manuel Rivas

£8.99

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Vintage Publishing
3 February 2011
ISBN: 9780099520337
Paperback
560 pages

From the publisher

On 19 August 1936 Hercules the boxer stands on the quayside at Coruna and watches Fascist soldiers piling up books and setting them alight. With this moment a young carefree group of friends are transformed into a broken generation.
Out of this incident during the early months of Spain's tragic civil war, Manuel Rivas weaves a colourful tapestry of stories and unforgettable characters to create a panorama of twentieth-century Spanish history. For it is not only the lives of Hercules the boxer and his friends that are tainted by the unending conflict, but also those of a young washerwoman who sees souls in the clouded river water and the stammering son of a judge who uncovers his father's hidden library.

As the singed pages fly away on the breeze, their stories live on in the minds of their readers.