Santiago Posteguillo

A journey through the hidden history of world literature

Many are the terrible circumstances under which books are written. Sometimes their gestation is surrounded by personal dramas, and sometimes they’re persecuted by experts in creating the perfect hells for creators. The KGB, the Un-American Activities Committee, fascist dictators, the Holy Inquisition… The purpose of all of these was to silence anyone who annoyed the powers that be due to their religion, origin, sexual orientation, language, or by simply wanting to express themselves freely.

Through thirty stories, this book shows some of those hells and how great writers from all time periods managed to overcome them. By doing so, we see how they left some of the best works in world literature behind for posterity. From ancient times to the 21^st century, from Europe to China, not to mention the United States, Latin America and Africa, we revisit stories by writers such as Horace, Rudyard Kipling, Saki, Pearl S. Buck, Carson McCullers, and Gabriel García Márquez.