Javier Cercas Book order

The second Terra Alta Investigation - a new crime series by one of Europe's leading writers

A Terra Alta novel. Winner of Spain's biggest literary prize - the Premio Planeta

Exploring themes of memory and identity, this narrative delves into the life of a Spanish Civil War soldier and the impact of his legacy on future generations. The author intertwines personal history with broader historical contexts, examining how the past shapes the present. Through a blend of investigative journalism and personal reflection, the book offers a poignant look at the complexities of familial ties and the haunting shadows of history.

The narrative delves into the life of Enric Marco, who was celebrated as a hero of the Spanish Civil War and a Holocaust survivor until his deception was revealed in 2005. Through a blend of fiction and nonfiction, Javier Cercas investigates Marco's complex identity, exploring themes of truth, memory, and the human capacity for self-deception. With a mix of compassion and honesty, Cercas examines the implications of Marco's lies, offering a profound commentary on the nature of heroism and the flaws inherent in humanity.

Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war.

An essential collection of literary criticism by one of Spain's most acclaimed authors

The Impostor is a humane, artistically responsible and civilised book, one that you finish feeling heartened that such a serious-minded writer as Cercas is at work. David Mills Sunday Times 20171029

In the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent. One summer's day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Cañas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life. Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Cañas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept. A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today.

In February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Franco's 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.

The young hero of The Speed of Light is an aspiring writer in provincial Spain in the 1980s, dreaming of burning success, searching for a real story to tell. Out of the blue he is offered the chance to work in a in a Midwestern university and soon he is in the United States, living a happy, carefree life, working and writing. Little does he know that his burgeoning friendship with the Vietnam Vet Rodney Falk, a man of few friends and strange ways, will influence the course of his entire life, or that he will become obsessed with unravelling the mystery at the heart of Rodney's life. Why do people sometimes ridicule and sometimes fear Rodney? Why does he shun the world? Why does he accept and befriend the narrator? What really happened at My Khe? When the young writer's own life takes a terrible twist many years later, Rodney may be the only person in the world who can save him.