Gironella, José María
Description
Peace After Waradvances the chronicle of the Spanish Civil War begun in The Cypresses Believe in God and One Million Dead. Covering only the immediate
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postwar years and set almost exclusively in Gerona, the novel once again follows the Alvear family and their various friends and enemies, compatriots and competitors as they contend with the consequences of their bloody national conflict. Daily life in Spain quickly finds that the worst effect of war is its disruptive influence on a people’s capacity to love “the minutiae of life and nature.” The horrific early days of the Second World War throw this effect into even sharper relief. Thus the will to power confronts the Golden Rule, liberty wrestles with despotism, and charity and hope contest corruption and doubt—all the while the chains of totalitarianism encroach upon the sovereignty of the individual man, woman, and child.
In plumbing the virtues and defects of the Spanish people and nation in the time of their most terrible personal turmoil, Peace After War sheds light on the character of humanity as a whole and offers a stark reminder of the sobering fact that the absence of war is not the same as peace, and an armistice can still be a fractious, unforgiving affair.
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