{"product_id":"uncertain-glory-isbn-9781681371801","title":"Uncertain Glory","description":"A \u003ci\u003eKIRKUS REVIEWS\u003c\/i\u003e BEST BOOK OF 2017\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA classic Catalan work about love, family, and class during the Spanish Civil war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpain, 1937. Posted to the Aragonese front, Lieutenant Lluís Ruscalleda eschews the drunken antics of his comrades and goes in search of intrigue. But the lady of Castel de Olivo—a beautiful widow with a shadowy past—puts a high price on her affections. In Barcelona, Trini Milmany struggles to raise Lluís’s son on her own, letters from the front her only solace. With bombs falling as fast as the city’s morale, she leaves to spend the winter with Lluís’s brigade on a quiet section of the line. But even on “dead” fronts the guns do not stay silent for long. Trini’s decision will put her family’s fate in the hands of Juli Soleràs, an old friend and a traitor of easy conscience, a philosopher-cynic locked in an eternal struggle with himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoan Sales, a combatant in the Spanish Civil War, distilled his experiences into a timeless story of thwarted love, lost youth, and crushed illusions. A thrilling epic that has drawn comparison with the work of Dostoyevsky and Stendhal, \u003ci\u003eUncertain Glory\u003c\/i\u003e is a homegrown counterpart to classics such as \u003ci\u003eHomage to Catalonia \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFor Whom the Bell Tolls\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A masterwork that will seduce anew with its passion, humour, pathos and the all too-human spats of anger.”—Eileen Battersby, \u003ci\u003eThe Irish Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In light of Catalonia’s current push for independence from Spain, the Catalan novelist Sales’s\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eUncertain Glory\u003c\/i\u003e — originally  published in 1956 — could not be timelier. Longings for separate  nationhood have roiled the area for generations, and in this new translation Bush offers a fresh look at the region  through the context of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict English readers  may best know in literature through writers like Ernest Hemingway and  Muriel Rukeyser.... a symphonic novel — full of philosophical, religious and literary meditations.\" —Lisa Russ Spaar, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Apparitions, lurid dreams, and disinterred mummies litter the novel,  lending it a hallucinatory quality that pairs perfectly with the darkly  comic depictions of wartime absurdity.\"\u003ci\u003e —Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “In this bravura novel of the Spanish Civil War 1936–39, Catalan author  Joan Sales evokes its messy, devastating lived reality, but even more  memorably the intense feeling of being alive which war paradoxically  produces...at the novel’s core is a group of young ‘voices’, brilliantly  rendered, as they rage to live.”—\u003ci\u003eHistory Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Catalan writer Sales tells a multilayered story of loves, faith, friendships, and ideals tested by the Spanish Civil War in this novel banned by Franco's censors, then published in 1956 after the author's return from exile....Philosophical and earthy, tragic and funny, honest, raw, superb: Sales makes Hemingway seem thin, even anemic, in comparison. This book is a rich and highly recommended feast.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Magnificent...Peter Bush and MacLehose Press have done a great service in reviving this Catalan classic.”—Maya Jaggi, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Wonderfully readable...\u003ci\u003eUncertain Glory \u003c\/i\u003eis\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ea major novel that expresses the disillusion of a generation who fought a just war against fascism, but lost their idealism and youth.”—Michael Eaude, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoan Sales\u003c\/b\u003e (1912–1983) was born in Barcelona to a Catalan family.  In 1932, he earned a law degree from the University of Barcelona and in  1933 married Maria Núria Folch. Their daughter, Núria, was born the  following year. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Sales, who was  a member of several regional anarchist and Communist groups, fought for  the Republican government on the Madrid and Aragonese fronts before  going into exile in France in 1939. He moved to Dominica in 1940, then  Mexico in 1942, finally returning to Catalonia in 1948. In 1955 he  co-founded the publishing house Club Editor, where he would edit and  publish some of the most important authors of twentieth-century Catalan  literature, among them Màrius Torres and Mercè Rodoreda, as well as his  own work, including a book of poems, \u003ci\u003eViatge d’un moribund\u003c\/i\u003e (1952); a collection of letters from his wartime and exile experiences, \u003ci\u003eCartes a Màrius Torres\u003c\/i\u003e (1976); and a Catalan translation of \u003ci\u003eThe Brothers Karamazov\u003c\/i\u003e. He died in Barcelona.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Bush\u003c\/b\u003e is an award-winning translator who lives in Oxford. Among his recent translations are Josep Pla’s \u003ci\u003eThe Gray Notebook\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the 2014 Ramon Llull Prize for Literary Translation, and Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s \u003ci\u003eTyrant Banderas\u003c\/i\u003e (both for NYRB Classics); Emili Teixidor’s \u003ci\u003eBlack Bread\u003c\/i\u003e, Jorge Carrión’s \u003ci\u003eBookshops\u003c\/i\u003e, and Prudenci Beltrana’s \u003ci\u003eJosafat\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJuan Goytisolo\u003c\/b\u003e (1931–2017) was born in Barcelona and was the author of many novels, including \u003ci\u003eMarks of Identity\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCount Julian\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eJuan the Landless\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Garden of Secrets\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as two volumes of autobiography.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301815603429,"sku":"NP9781681371801","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681371801.jpg?v=1767743194","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/uncertain-glory-isbn-9781681371801","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}