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The Carpenter's Pencil
The Carpenter's Pencil
Author: Manuel Rivas
Manuel Rivas has been heralded as one of the brightest in a new wave of Spanish writers influenced by Spanish and European traditions, as well as by the history of Spain over the past seventy years. A bestseller in Spain, The Carpenter's Pencil has been published in nine countries. — Set in the dark days of the Spanish Civil War, The Ca...  more » charts the linked destinies of a remarkable cast of unique characters. All are bound by the events of the Civil War-the artists and the peasants alike-and all are brought to life, in Rivas's skillful hand, with the power of the carpenter's pencil, a pencil that draws both the measured line and the artist's dazzling vision.

Translated from the Galician by Jonathan Dunne.

"A profound tale of love, art, politics and the lingering effects of a gentleness and cruelty on the soul." (The Miami Herald)

"Rivas is a master . . . You never know, at the beginning of a paragraph, where he will take you. His pages bloom like flowers, swerving in unpredictable arcs toward a light-source that is constantly moving." (Bookforum)

"He is an important storyteller because he is sensitive and has an incredible ear, which, in his fiction, is allied to great ingenuity." (John Berger)
ISBN-13: 9780099448464
ISBN-10: 0099448467
Publication Date: 1/2/2003
Pages: 176
Edition: New Ed
Rating:
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Publisher: Vintage
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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This is from the publisher:
"It is the summer of 1936, the early months of the agonising civil war that engulfs Spain and shakes the rest of the world. In a prison in the pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela, an artist sketches the famous porch of the cathedral, the Portico da Gloria. He uses a carpenter's pencil. But instead of reproducing the sculptured faces of the prophets and elders, he draws the faces of his fellow Republican prisoners.

Many years later in post-Franco Spain, a survivor of that period, Doctor Daniel da Barca, returns from exile to his native Galicia, and the threads of past memories begin to be woven together.

This novel conveys the horror and savagery of the tragedy that divided Spain, and the experiences of the men and women who lived through it. Yet in the process, it also relates one of the most beautiful love stories imaginable."


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