Valley of the Fallen

Rojas Carlos, Grossman Edith

This historical novel by one of Spain's most celebrated authors weaves a tale of disparate time periods: the early years of the nineteenth century, when Francisco de Goya was at the height of his artistic career, and the final years of Generalissimo Franco's Fascist rule in the 1970s. Rojas re-creates the nineteenth-century corridors of power and portrays the relationship between Goya and King Fernando VII, a despot bent on establishing a cruel regime after Spain's War of Independence. Goya obliges the king's request for a portrait, but his depiction not only fails to flatter but reflects a terrible darkness and grotesqueness. More than a century later, transcending conventional time, Goya observes Franco's body lying in state and experiences again a dark and monstrous despair.

Rojas's work is a dazzling tour de force, a unique combination of narrative invention and art historical expertise that only he could have brought to the page.

About the Author

Carlos Rojas is a novelist, an art historian, and since the age of fifty a creator of visual works of art. He was born in Barcelona and came to the United States as a young man. In 1960 he joined the faculty of Emory University, where he is now Charles Howard Candler Professor of Spanish Emeritus. He has received numerous important Spanish literary prizes, including the Premio Nadal.

Edith Grossman has translated into English many works by major Latin American and Peninsular writers, garnering an array of awards and honours.

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