Descripción de la mentira / Description of the Lie
Poetry , 1977
Ed. Abada
Description of the Lie is one of the essential books from the last fifty years of Spanish poetry. Antonio Gamoneda, Cervantes Prize 2006, was born in Oviedo and, as a boy and young man, experienced the cruelest hardships of social and political oppression under the Franco dictatorship. This book, first published in 1977, bares the heart and soul of a Spain just beginning to recover from the horrors of those years. The poetry is rich in imagery drawn from the area of León where Gamoneda has lived most of his life and where he has raised his family. The book presents a unique instance of the local in all its richness and complexity serving as a liberating force. It embodies a truly national consciousness: loss, despair, compromise and recovery — aspects of Spain’s tragic twentieth century history.