Luis Martín-Santos’s grotesque and darkly comic novel of Francoist Madrid

“Martín-Santos’s novel represented a breath of fresh air, of modernity, with its experimental games and its stubborn work to create a language of its own.” —Mario Vargas Llosa TIME OF SILENCE Luis Martín-Santos Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush This novel set in the squalor of the first decade of General Franco’s dictatorship follows a few days in the life of Don Pedro, a cancer research scientist with Nobel ambitions. His dallying with literary and philosophical coteries, his hunt for the right strain of experimental mice in Madrid’s slums, and the table talk at his boardinghouse are depicted here with anything but the social realism one might expect of a mid-twentieth-century Spanish novel. Instead, Luis Martín-Santos presents us with an altogether innovative stream of consciousness, unfurling a lyrical yet jaundiced tableau of a society hitting rock bottom after years of authoritarian rule. Published in 1962, Time of Silence is a masterpiece of modern Spanish fiction. Its vision of depressed individuals struggling to survive makes it a fictional fleur du mal for our times. Martín-Santos draws on the black humor of Goya and the wit of Joyce to create a picture of a world beyond hope, redeemed solely by genial self-mockery. Peter Bush's new translation gloriously restores all that was previously axed by Spanish censors. “Time of Silence surprised all the critics and writers with their trousers down. All of them, at that time, considered this novel to be the book they themselves would have liked to have written.... [T]he author was dead, but his book, one of the most influential in modern Spain, lived on. It lives on, despite the passage of time and people.” —Guillermo Cabrera Infante For three days only, Time of Silence is available at 25% off. BUY THE BOOK You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from NYRB. You can choose the types of mailings you wish to receive: Update preferences   New York Review Books 207 East 32nd Street New York, NY 10016-6305 Not a subscriber? Sign up for our newsletter here. Unsubscribe