KIRKUS REVIEWS
"A spanish american Professor uncovers her rich family history in Maura's novel… The novel shines when Lola narrates her own life… A compelling and poignant journey of self-discovery that spans continents and generations."
RAMÓN SENDER BARAYÓN, AUTHOR OF DEATH IN ZAMORA
"What a story! So well written! Once I started reading Madrid Again, I couldn't put it down! The spanish civil war and its legacy—how many lives changed or ruined or transformed forever."
MARK EISNER, NERUDA: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A POET
Soledad Maura has woven a magical, cross-cultural, transnational tapestry that will prove vital in these times when global migration is both so poignant yet controversial. Maura's fiction reads at a much faster pace than in her biographies, perfect for this book and genre. Still, she is able to transport the skill she uses in creating such a sense of intimacy in her non-fiction work to her novel. It may be very cliché to say that i felt i was walking the streets of madrid with her—briskly--but i kept feeling that incredible sensation, again and again.
GUY HEDGECOE, SPAIN CORRESPONDENT FOR THE BBC AND AUTHOR OF FREEZING FRANCO: THE BATTLE FOR SPAIN'S MEMORY
Madrid Again is a powerful account of a spanish-american family, its upheavals and the impact history has upon it. Crisscrossing the atlantic, soledad maura's novel skillfully explores what it means to be caught between two cultures and two languages. She conjures up a vivid picture of both post-war spain and small-town america and in the process evokes the dilemmas, insecurities and wonders of a bi-cultural existence. Madrid Again shows the inexorable link between a family's history and its present and how difficult it can be to escape the shadow of the past.
PETER SMITH, A GOOD FAMILY
What does it meanto belong (but not entirely) to two completely different countries and cultures? In her debut novel, soledad fox maura creates an indelible portrait of exile, longing, identity, and of one woman's search for meaning amid the scraps and fables of the past. Madrid Again is a knockout--spare, lyrical, sexy, and haunting.
GLORIA GARCÍA LORCA, ARTIST AND POET
"The tempo of Madrid Again carries you effortlessly from beginning to end. The story is fascinating…and has all the unmistakable ingredients of exile. The writing is strong and bold and often thankfully tender."
ALAN RIDING, AND THE SHOW WENT ON: CULTURAL LIFE IN NAZI-OCCUPIED PARIS
Soledad Maura has written a book for our times, an age of multinational wanderers, exiles and refugees, of people living in two countries, two cultures and two languages. Here, through the fragile voice of her bi-national narrator, maura poignantly reveals how only by unveiling the hidden past of her family can she finally resolve the disturbing contradictions of her own identity.
AARON SHULMAN, THE AGE OF DISENCHANTMENTS: THE EPIC STORY OF SPAIN'S MOST NOTORIOUS LITERARY FAMILY AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Madrid Again is a subtle, shimmering novel about searching—for identity, for secrets, and ultimately for home. Like the author herself, and her main character, the book is as american as it is spanish. An immigrant story about finding belonging between two cultures, and a postwar story about communing with the ghosts of history.
GIJS VAN HENSBERGEN, AUTHOR OF GAUDÍ, GUERNICA, AND LA SAGRADA FAMILIA: GAUDÍ'S HEAVEN ON EARTH
From small town Massachusetts to metropolitan Madrid Soledad Maura essays the power of objects and the shadowland of memory to create a powerful narrative of both hope and resignation. Our fragile feelings are reconnected in this brave and deeply moving transatlantic odyssey in search of identity and the solace of a healing heart."
Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy: The Life of Jorge Semprún
A man of many faces, Jorge Semprún perfectly personified the struggles and successes of twentieth-century Europe. Semprún enjoyed a privileged childhood as the grandson of Spanish prime minister, Antonio Maura, until his world was shattered by the political strife of the Spanish Civil War and he went into exile. Facing dangers rarely seen outside the action movies of Hollywood, Semprún adopted a resilient spirit and rebel’s stance. He fought with the French Resistance in World War II.
A Spanish Woman in Love and War: Constancia del la Mora
By addressing the political and sociological meanings of Constancia de la Mora’s communism, the author opens up further audiences among historians of twentieth-century Spain while her exploration of how, why and with what consequences de la Mora then concealed this allegiance embeds her story in the domestic political history of twentieth-century America with its central mobilising narrative of anticommunism. Professor Helen Graham, Dept. of History, Royal Holloway, University of London
Flaubert and Don Quijote: The Influence of Cervantes on Madame Bovary
Flaubert used Cervantes' great novel as a model in his attempt to renew literature, to liberate him from the grasp of dominant literary schools. But the significance of Fox's study goes far beyond a detailed analysis of a single case in the history of literature. It is a 'comparative' study in the deepest sense of this term. The book shows how the discontent with actual literature in both cases of Cervantes and Flaubert leads first of all toward an ironic parody, distantiation from the dominant trends and later to radically new forms of artistic consciousness...
Ida y vuelta. La vida de Jorge Semprún
The definitive biography of Jorge Semprún, a legendary character who crossed the Spanish and European twentieth century in the front line.
The life of Jorge Semprún is practically the history of Europe in the 20th century, and perhaps he is the Spaniard who comes closest to "the uprooted travelers of the century", as Tony Judt described intellectuals. Undoubtedly, together with Picasso and García Lorca, he is the Spaniard of the 20th century with the greatest projection and international relevance.
Jorge Semprún - L'écriture et la vie
La vie de Jorge Semprún reflète presque tous les épisodes de l'histoire de l'Europe au XXe siècle. Depuis sa naissance, en 1923, dans une famille de la grande bourgeoisie madrilène, en passant par le traumatisme de la Guerre civile et de l'exil, jusqu'au maquis et à la déportation au camp de Buchenwald, sans oublier l'aventure communiste, Jorge Semprún a tous les traits des «voyageurs déracinés» des grands intellectuels du siècle, selon l'expression de l'historien Tony Judt.
Connie: Biografia de Constancia de la Mora
Biography of Constancia de la Mora, aristocrat and republican
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Constancia de la Mora is one of the most paradoxical and enigmatic Spanish figures of the 1930s.Born into a privileged and conservative environment, destined to marry well, have children and be part of the elite of "old Spain", she broke with the canons of the time by becoming a militant Republican, getting divorced, and sending her only daughter to the Soviet Union.