A deeply personal work of historical interrogation from the acclaimed
author of Outlaws. Javier Cercas, "the bard of [the] movement for
the recovery of Spain's suppressed memory" (The New York Times Book
Review), unpacks the legacy of the Spanish Civil War by way of his own
family's history.
Growing up, Cercas was inculcated with the legend of his beloved
great-uncle, Manuel Mena, who died at nineteen in the bloodiest battle
of the Spanish Civil War--while fighting for Franco. Who was this young
man? A fascist hero whose memory is now an embarrassment or a committed
idealist who happened to fall on the wrong side of history? In Lord of
All the Dead, Cercas pieces together the life of his enigmatic relative
and in so doing tells the story of an entire generation. Combining
intimate family history, investigative scholarship, personal confession,
and a novelist's imagination, Cercas has crafted a transcendent portrait
of a country's indelible scars, a book about heroism, death, the
persistence of the past, and the meaning of an individual life against
the tapestry of history.