Todo es silencio

Manuel Rivas delivers a literary masterpiece about three young friends growing up in a community which is bound by a conspiracy of silence.

Fins and Brinco are best friends, and they both adore the wild and beautiful Leda. The three young friends spend their days exploring the dunes and picking through the treasures that the sea washes on to the shores of Galicia. One day, as they are playing in the abandoned school on the edge of the village, they come across treasure of another kind: a huge cache of whisky hidden under a sheet. But before they can exploit their discovery a shot rings out, and a man wearing an impeccable white suit and panama hat enters the room. That day they learn the most important lesson of all, that the mouth is for keeping quiet.

The Low Voices

The Low Voices

The book is full of wonderful personal stories, set against a background of the ravages of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath at home, and the wider world as Coca-Cola sets up a factory nearby and news comes in of men landing on the moon.

A brilliant coming-of-age novel from one of Spain’s greatest storytellers, is a humorous and philosophical take on memory, belonging, and the nature of storytelling itself.

A masterpiece of unusual beauty by one of Europe's greatest living writers — a brilliant evocation of the Spanish Civil War.

On August 19, 1936 Hercules the boxer stands on the quayside at Coruña and watches Fascist soldiers piling up books and setting them alight. With this moment a young, carefree group of friends are transformed into a broken generation. Out of this incident during the early months of Spain's tragic civil war, Manuel Rivas weaves a colorful tapestry of stories and unforgettable characters to create a panorama of 20th-century Spanish history — for it is not only the lives of Hercules the boxer and his friends that are tainted by the unending conflict, but also those of a young washerwoman who sees souls in the clouded river water and the stammering son of a judge who uncovers his father's hidden library. As the singed pages fly away on the breeze, their stories live on in the minds of their readers.

En la cárcel de Santiago de Compostela, en plena Guerra Civil, un pintor dibuja el Pórtico de la Gloria con un lápiz de carpintero, reflejando los rostros… y aun más, las desesperación de sus compañeros de presidio. Un guardián, su futuro asesino, lo observa todo. A partir de aquí se dibuja una historia donde el amor logra vencer a la desesperación.

Мануэль Ривас (р. 1957) – один из самых известных и самых премированных писателей современной Испании. Он живет в Галисии, и его художественный метод критики окрестили "галисийским магическим реализмом". В своих книгах Ривас, по его словам, "пытается заново придумать реальность, перестроить ее и спасти".