The Island
Author: Matute, Ana Maria
ISBN: 9780241374283
Publisher: Penguin UK
Year First Published: 2020
Pages: 192
Dimensions: 196mm x 128mm x 13mm
Format: Paperback / softback
Description:
A searing coming-of-age tale by one of the greatest Spanish writers of the 20th century, set on the island of Mallorca during the Spanish Civil War.
"This is an old and wicked island. An island of Phoenicians and merchants, of bloodsuckers and frauds."
Ana Maria Matute's 1959 novel (original title Primera memoria) is a stifling story of rebellious adolescence, narrated by Matia, as she struggles against her domineering grandmother, schemes with her mercurial cousin Borja and begins to fall in love with the strange boy Manuel.
Steeped in myth, fairy tale and biblical allusion, the novel depicts Mallorca as an enchanted but wicked island, a lost Eden and Never Never Land combined, where the sun burns through stained glass windows and the wind tears itself on the agaves. Ostensibly concerned with Matia's anxieties about entering the adult world, this internal conflict is set against the much wider, deeper, and more frightening conflict of the civil war as it plays out almost secretly on the island, set in turn against the backdrop of the Inquisition's mass burning of Jews in previous centuries. These two conflicts shimmer at the edges of Matia's highly subjective account of her life on the island, where life is drawn along painful and divisive lines.
ISBN: 9780241374283
Publisher: Penguin UK
Year First Published: 2020
Pages: 192
Dimensions: 196mm x 128mm x 13mm
Format: Paperback / softback
Description:
A searing coming-of-age tale by one of the greatest Spanish writers of the 20th century, set on the island of Mallorca during the Spanish Civil War.
"This is an old and wicked island. An island of Phoenicians and merchants, of bloodsuckers and frauds."
Ana Maria Matute's 1959 novel (original title Primera memoria) is a stifling story of rebellious adolescence, narrated by Matia, as she struggles against her domineering grandmother, schemes with her mercurial cousin Borja and begins to fall in love with the strange boy Manuel.
Steeped in myth, fairy tale and biblical allusion, the novel depicts Mallorca as an enchanted but wicked island, a lost Eden and Never Never Land combined, where the sun burns through stained glass windows and the wind tears itself on the agaves. Ostensibly concerned with Matia's anxieties about entering the adult world, this internal conflict is set against the much wider, deeper, and more frightening conflict of the civil war as it plays out almost secretly on the island, set in turn against the backdrop of the Inquisition's mass burning of Jews in previous centuries. These two conflicts shimmer at the edges of Matia's highly subjective account of her life on the island, where life is drawn along painful and divisive lines.
