Manuscript Of Ashes

Following Muñoz Molinas acclaimed 18th book, "Sepharad", this translation of his third novel (published in his native Spain in 1986) dives into a bleak corner of Francos waning dictatorship. In 1969, Minaya, a student who has attracted secret police notice, leaves Madrid for his uncle Manuels house in a small town in Cordoba. There, he plans to research Republican-era poet Jacinto Solana, who briefly stayed at Manuels house after being released from prison in 1947. The house itself is a gloomy place of stale secrets and arrested lives: Manuels mother, Doña Elvira, lives reclusively at its top; Manuel still doesnt forgive her for her disapproval of Mariana Ríos, the artists model whom he married in 1937 and who was killed, supposedly by a stray fascist bulletand whom Jacinto Solana also loved. Minaya (with help from Manuels young maid, Inés) finds hidden manuscripts by Jacinto, which put him on the trail of the true story. Molina keeps an iron grip on the plots intricacies. The abrupt payoff is more Agatha Christie than anything else, but Molinas slow moves through the storys maze capture the wrenching tragedy of 20th-century Spain.