Javier Cercas Quote
Nobody remembers them, you know ? Nobody. Nobody remebers why they died, why they didnt have a wife and childrenand a sun lit room either, nobody, least of all people for whom they fought. There is no and there never will be some pathetic streetin one pathetic village of a shitty country that is named after any of them. Miralles stopped talking, he took out his handkerchief, wiped the tears, blew his nose, he did so without shame, as if he was not ashamed of crying in public,as Homers warriors of old did it, as any soldier of Salamis would do.
Javier Cercas
Nobody remembers them, you know ? Nobody. Nobody remebers why they died, why they didnt have a wife and childrenand a sun lit room either, nobody, least of all people for whom they fought. There is no and there never will be some pathetic streetin one pathetic village of a shitty country that is named after any of them. Miralles stopped talking, he took out his handkerchief, wiped the tears, blew his nose, he did so without shame, as if he was not ashamed of crying in public,as Homers warriors of old did it, as any soldier of Salamis would do.
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legion etrangere, veterans
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About Javier Cercas
He was born in Ibahernando, Cáceres, Spain. He is a frequent contributor to the Catalan edition of El País and the Sunday supplement. He worked for two years at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Illinois, United States.
He is part of a group of well-known Spanish novelists who have published "historical memory" fiction, focusing on the Spanish Civil War and Francoist state, including Julio Llamazares, Andrés Trapiello, and Jesús Ferrero.
Soldiers of Salamis (translated by Anne McLean) won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004. McLean's translations of his novels The Speed of Light and Outlaws were also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, in 2008 and 2016 respectively.
During the 2014–15 academic year, he was the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of European Comparative Literature at St Anne's College at Oxford, England. He was awarded the 2016 European Book Prize for The Imposter.