Confined to a prison cell, thrice-murderer Pascual Duarte recounts his
journey from a violent childhood to a life of pain and misfortune;
juxtaposing tableaus of country poverty against scenes of bare
brutality, Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela crafts a powerful meditation
on cruelty and anomie.
The Family of Pascual Duarte follows his upbringing in the poor
Spanish province of Extremadura to his eventual imprisonment--and
impending death sentence. Death permeates Duarte's world: his father's
grotesque death to rabies, his young brother's drowning in an oil vat,
and the loss of his children. But it is his wife's sudden death that
condemns him to the darkest path when, losing all faith and driven by
blind revenge, he kills her souteneur. Now an alien to the world around
him, Pascual Duarte resigns himself to his bloodied fate--yet never
gives up his search for peace.
Camilo José Cela has been recognized as one of the pioneers of Spanish
literary realism, and his masterwork The Family of Pascual Duarte
proves the power of his prose. The novel, which birthed the
transgressive and groundbreaking tremendismo movement, roils with
emotion and unflinching inhumanity, painting the Spanish countryside in
bloodshed, eroticism, and an unshakeable feeling of grief. Blending the
political with the personal with the philosophic, the result is an
unparalleled exploration of the fraught relationship between man and
society, and the past's inescapable hold on the present.
