Luciérnagas / Fireflies
Novel , 1955
Destino
A manifesto in favour of love and a condemnation of the brutality of war.
Written when she was just twenty-three, Fireflies earned Ana María Matute the Critics’ Prize and a place on the shortlist for the Nadal Prize in 1949. However, the novel was banned before publication by Franco’s censors and it wasn’t
until 1955 that an abridged version, authorised by the dictatorship, was issued.
The complete novel did not see the light of day until the 1990s. It describes the experiences of a group of children in a war-torn Barcelona, menaced by air raids and afflicted by the deprivations of the Civil War. Among these children, the astonished gaze of Sol, a teenager from a wealthy family, comes to the fore, as do her efforts to survive amidst the ruins of a devastated world, in which, nonetheless, there still remains a glimmer of hope and love.
"...an outstanding modern writer who deserves to be better known outside of the Spanish-speaking world." Phoebe Ann Porter, Ph.D., Literary translator, and Lecturer, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts