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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > The Anatomy of a Moment

The Anatomy of a Moment

In The Anatomy of a Moment, Cercas patiently dissects a key moment in European history and analyses the conditions that led to an attempted coup.

On 23 February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Franco’s dictatorship behind, Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero and a band of right-wing civil guards burst into the Spanish parliament during the investiture of the new prime minister and began shooting. Only three members of the Cortes defied the incursion and the orders of its leaders, and did not dive for cover: Adolfo Suárez, the outgoing prime minister and architect of the ‘transition’; Guttierez Mellado, a former Francoist general; and Santiago Carillo, the head of the recently legalised Communist Party. As the outcome hangs precariously in the balance, the reader relives the tension of those crucial hours and begins to discover that this was the final battle in a civil war that tore Spain apart forty years previously.

‘A brilliant reconfiguring of a key event in contemporary European history. Audacious and wholly fascinating’
William Boyd

Click to buy this book from Foyles

Author

Javier Cercas

Javier Cercas

Books

The Anatomy of a Moment

Javier Cercas was born in 1962 in Ibahernando, in the Cáceres province of Spain. He worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois for two years in the 1980s, and became Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona in 1989, a post he held until 2006.

He has published numerous literary studies, translations and essays and has also been a regular columnist for El País. He wrote his first volume of short stories, El móvil, in 1987, followed by his first novel El inquilino (1989). In 2001, Cercas’ novel Soldiers of Salamis was published to great acclaim, winning awards such as the Premio Salambó in 2002. David Trueba’s film adaptation (2003) won a Goya award.

The Anatomy of a Moment (published in Spain in 2009), for which Cercas won Spain’s National Narrative award, sold over ¼ million copies.

Translator

Anne McLean

Anne McLean

Books

The Armies

The Anatomy of a Moment

The Sound of Things Falling

Feast of the Innocents

The All Saints' Day Lovers

The Sorrows of Mexico

The Shape of the Ruins

Anne McLean has translated works by many Spanish and Latin American authors including Hector Abad, Carmen Martín Gaite, Julio Cortázar, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Enrique Vila-Matas, Tomás Eloy Martínez and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Published by

Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011
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In The Anatomy of a Moment, Cercas patiently dissects a key moment in European history and analyses the conditions that led to an attempted coup.

On 23 February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Franco’s dictatorship behind, Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero and a band of right-wing civil guards burst into the Spanish parliament during the investiture of the new prime minister and began shooting. Only three members of the Cortes defied the incursion and the orders of its leaders, and did not dive for cover: Adolfo Suárez, the outgoing prime minister and architect of the ‘transition’; Guttierez Mellado, a former Francoist general; and Santiago Carillo, the head of the recently legalised Communist Party. As the outcome hangs precariously in the balance, the reader relives the tension of those crucial hours and begins to discover that this was the final battle in a civil war that tore Spain apart forty years previously.

‘A brilliant reconfiguring of a key event in contemporary European history. Audacious and wholly fascinating’
William Boyd

Click to buy this book from Foyles

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