The Anatomy of a Moment

Resumen del libro

In February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Francos' dictatorship and during the first democratic vote in parliament for a new prime minister Colonel Tejero and a band of right-wing soldiers burst into the Spanish parliament and began firing shots. Only three members of Congress defied the incursion and did not dive for cover,: Adolfo Suarez the then outgoing prime minister, who had steered the country away from the Franco era, Guttierez Mellado, a conservative general who had loyally served democracy, and Santiago Carillo, the head of the Communist Party, which had just been legalised.
In The Anatomy of a Moment, Cercas examines a key moment in Spanish history, just as he did so successfully in his Spanish Civil War novel, Soldiers of Salamis. This is the only coup ever to have been caught on film as it was happening, which, as Cercas says, 'guaranteed both its reality and its unreality'. Every February a few seconds of the video are shown again and Spaniards congratulate themselves for standing up for democracy, but Cercas says that things were very quiet that afternoon and evening while all over Spain people stayed inside waiting for the coup to be defeated .... or to triumph.

Biografía del autor

Javier Cercas (Ibahernando, Cax{0026} x00301;ceres, 1962) es autor de entre otras obras, las novelas El mox{0026} x00301;vil, El inquilino, El vientre de la ballena, Soldados de Salamina, La velocidad de la luz, Anatomix{0026} x00301;a de un instante, Las leyes de la frontera, El impostor, El monarca de las sombras, Terra Alta, Independencia y El castillo de Batbazul. Sus libros han sido traducidos a max{0026} x00301;s de treinta idiomas y obtenido los galardones más prestigiosos, como el Premio Nacional en España, el Foreign Fiction Prize en Reino Unido, el Mondello en Italia, el Malraux en Francia, el de la Crítica en Chile, el Correntes dx{0026} x02019;Escritas en Portugal, el Athens European Prize for Literature en Grecia, el Taofen en China o el Premio a la Mejor Novela Europea que otorga el Parlamento Europeo. Ha recibido, ademax{0026} x00301;s, importantes galardones de ensayo y periodismo, como el Francesco de Sanctis en Italia o el Francisco Cerecedo y el Mariano de Cavia en España, y diversos reconocimientos al conjunto de su carrera, como el Prix Ulysse, el Premio del Salone del Libro di Torino, el Premio Friuladria, el Cittax{0026} x00300; di Vigevano, el Premio Sicilia o el Ennio Flaiano.