More Books to Read

For detailed information on Granada, including history, tapas bars etc, granadainfo is a good site.

Non-fiction

In addition to the relevant classic writings of George Orwell, Laurie Lee and Ernest Hemingway on the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath there are:

Ian Gibson’s Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life gives a detailed account of Lorca’s life and Lorca’s Granada: A Practical Guide describes locations which were important in Lorca’s life. Leila Mahfouz, the girl murdered in our novel, had used both of them in her research.

Robert Irwin’s The Alhambra is an absorbing and provocative modern history of The Alhambra, one of the world’s most iconic buildings.

Michael Jacobs’ Andalucia (Pallas Guides) is both a learned guide and cultural history of this most beautiful and fascinating corner of Europe.

Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia offers a comic memoir of life in the mountains south of Granada, which in our novel, is home to the Romero family.

Paul Preston has written many books on the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. Our character Paula Romero reads them in translation. Guardian Madrid correspondent Giles Tremlett’s The Ghosts of Spain is an intriguing analysis of contemporary Spanish society and culture.

Novels

The novel The Flanders Panel which turns out to be very important for several characters in Blood Wedding is by Arturo Perez Reverte, who writes both detective and historical fiction.

Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sanson (author of the Matthew Shardlake novels) is a crackingly good thriller of life in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Victoria Hislop’s The Return has introduced the realities of the Spanish Civil War and its impact on Granada to a wide audience.

The Javier Falcon detective series by Robert Wilson is set in Seville. Javier Falcon is rather more hard-boiled than Max Romero, but many people enjoy the books.

The novels by Rebecca Pawel featuring the Guardia Civil officer, Carlos Tejada, are set in the early years of the Franco dictatorship in various locations in Spain. The Summer Snow takes place in Granada.

Contemporary Spanish writing

The writers and readers of Spain have endured heavy censorship for much of the last 500 years. Spain’s new democracy has opened up Spain to new influences, and stimulated some of the best new writing in Europe. We hope to use this website to open a conversation with readers on books written in English about Spain, and more important, books by Spanish authors which are now in translation. For example Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas and Anne McLean is a marvellous novel (beautifully translated) about a mysterious incident in the life of Spain’s leading Francoist poet during the Civil War.

Javier Marias A Heart so White moves between contemporary Madrid and Cuba in the 1950s, slowly revealing a family secret which perhaps would be better forgotten entirely.