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Category: Crystal Cabinets

  • Tres Impostores Catalanes
    The Verdict of Historical Memory

    So just what is “historical memory” and why would Cercas feel obligated to mention it so frequently, more often than not preceded by a disparaging epithet? In  brief, “historical memory” is a shorthand phrase for an international movement that aspires to commemorate the bad as well as the good in a country’s history, especially in countries recently emerging from wars, violence and dictatorships.

  • Tres Impostores Catalanes
    The Verdicts of the Imagination

    Unlike Trotsky and Mercader, Iván is not a historical figure but a fictional creation: a composite, no doubt, of several of Padura’s friends and acquaintances, an amalgam of his generation. The Trotsky and Mercader threads, more than two-thirds of the novel, are based as much as possible on facts established by historical evidence. Iván’s tale, on the other hand, is not historical fiction as such, although of course it takes place in an historical context — in this case, in Cuba from the 1970s to the early years of the new century.

  • Tres Impostores Catalanes
    The Verdict of Military History

    Of the three impostors, Juan Pujol Garcíahas been treated most kindly by history, largely because his story belongs to military history, and he did manage to get himself — after some maneuvering — on the correct side of World War II, which is to say, on the winning side.

David Brendan O'Meara on substack

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