Max Aub

This colossal project by the German-born writer Max Aub on the Spanish Civil War combines reality with fictitious events.

Laberinto mágico was written in the form of a saga, published between 1943 and 1967, and focuses on the Spanish Civil War and its consequences. Max Aub himself knew at first hand the hardships of the conflict, so much so that after spending time in France and Algeria he went into exile in Mexico where he wrote this magnum opus.

The saga comprises six novels: Campo cerrado (1943), Campo de sangre (1945), Campo abierto (1951), Campo del Moro (1963), Campo francés (1965) and Campo de los almendros (1967), as well as another 25 short stories describing various episodes in the conflict, and combining real and fictitious elements.

One of the most characteristic features of the work is the way in which it is written, in a style resembling a film script which alternates between documentary and fiction.

The appearance of Campo francés caused a great impact, updating the terrible episode of the Republican exodus to France framed at the beginning of World War II. The positive reception of the thematic aspects of the work extended to its unusual form, which was described as: "dialogued book", "written in the manner of a film script", which "wants to extract its form from a precise mix of documentary and fiction".

“Not only indispensable reading for anyone who wants to fathom the psychological origins of the Spanish Civil War, it is indisputably the most impressive work of literary art among the host of novels produced by the war.” Gerald Griffiths Brown, author of A Literary History of Spain