Camilo Jose That

Camilo Jose That is a Spanish writer born with Padron (anc. Iria Flavia) Galicia, (Spain) in 1916 and died with Madrid in 2002. Novelist, poet, essay writer, he devoted himself to all the literary kinds.

That published its first novel the familia of Pascual Duarte ( the Family of Pascal Duarte ) in 1942. The style of this novel was described as tremendismo , it is the description, pushed until the exaggeration, of the sordid and postponed universe of a criminal hardly conscious of his acts. This novel marked the rebirth of the Spanish literary life in a landscape afflicted by the civil war. Indeed, out of many writers and intellectuals had been killed or had exiled themselves, and the disastrous economic situation of the country as well as the pro-Franco censure blocked the appearance of new talents.

The other most notable work of That is the colmena ( the Hive , 1953). It is a description of a few days in the life of very many characters (approximately three hundreds) living with Madrid in 1942.

For the whole of its work, That accepted the Nobel Prize of literature in 1989 and the Prix Cervantes in 1995.

In 1931 it settles with its family with Madrid and it makes its studies at the University, then in 1936 it fought pro-Franco side during the Spanish Civil war. Subsequently it rejects the dictatorship of Free and it maintains an attitude independent and provocative towards the mode.

Camilo Jose That remains with the eyes of some a character ambiguous, readily provocative, holding of the matter homophobes, oscillating between complicity and criticism towards the pro-Franco dictatorship.

It was satrap Collège of' Pataphysique.

Works translated into French

Mrs. Caldwell speaks with his/her son , Denoël, 1968
Office of darkness 5 , A. Michel, 1978
Nouvelles adventures and mishaps of Lazarillo de Tormès , Gallimard, 1989
Mazurka for two dead , Julliard, 1990
the Pretty Crime of the police officer and other anecdotes , French general Librairie, 1991
San Camilo 1936 , Seuil, 1994
the Hive , Gallimard, 1996
the Family of Pascal Duarte (1), Seuil, 1997
Eleven stories of football , Bartillat, 1998

(1) the family of Pascal Duarte , appeared in 1942, this novel of an obscure heart, captive of its incapacity to be expressed, was affirmed by the strength of its social denunciation, by its realism of a deliberated blackness. At the origin of a current baptized " tremendismo" (of tremendo : terrifying), it was brought closer to the literature of the absurdity and the Foreigner of Camus.

In the prison of Badajoz in 1937, one condemned awaits its execution, Pascual Duarte puts in writing the routes of a made life of moral misery and violences. Born before the civil war (1936-1939) in an area poorest from Spain, Extremadure, Pascal is resulting from a rough medium, with quasi primitive manners. It grows between a father contravandier, a mother acariâtre and ivrogness, a sister who will finish prostitute .

Its love sincere for Lola will not resist the life proof. The escape, jealousy and to finish the murder: such will be the tribulations of a being able of greatest tenderness like more sanguinary ferocity .

It is the first work, and one moreover seizing of Camilo Jose That.

the edition of 1960, Camilo dedicates it to its enemies, textually: Dedico esta edicion put enemigos, that tanto han ayudado into semi will square me.

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