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larshuebner's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
amiboughter's review against another edition
4.0
Fiction that is partially about how it's not fiction. Spanish Civil War veterans who were not paid their due respect, neglect of historical memory, fascism, exile, the scars of war, and many things unsaid, still.
"To write novels you don't need an imagination... Just a memory. Novels are written by combining recollections."
"To write novels you don't need an imagination... Just a memory. Novels are written by combining recollections."
annacabrespina's review against another edition
4.0
fa anys que el papa em diu que me'l llegeixi. m'ha agradat molt, curtet i dividit en tres grans capítols. bàsicament com un periodista - el propi autor - decideix investigar sobre uns fets que van passar a la guerra cívil, i va barrejant el present i el passat, que ha descobert arrel d'investigar. Se'm ha fet súper lleuger, tenia ganes de saber com acabava i m'ha agradat molt :)
daniellop's review against another edition
5.0
Aunque la segunda parte me ha aburrido un poco, la primera parte me parece interesante y la tercera me parece una cosa maravillosa. Quizás las 5 estrellas son más por ese último tramo de la novela que otra cosa.
faintgirl's review against another edition
3.0
What a peculiar little book! At first we completely failed to get on - long lists of names, jumping between dates, a narrative that flitted between various points of the Spanish Civil War and the present. The book is split into three parts, detailing first the writer's early forays into researching his novel, the middle part is the novel, albeit in an unfinished form, and then he ends with more present day narrative of his thoughts and investigations post novel. As the story enters the second book and the narrative becomes more linear, it all becomes more readable, which was definitely appreciated. By the end the author has turned this into a short but succinct novel about the nature of Heroism during wars with confusing lines, of the human loss and the difficult decisions that must be made in such times. After such a confusing start, this development is most interesting, making Soldiers of Salamis a quick but intriguing read, particularly as this is an area of history that I knew virtually nothing about before picking up the book. Definitely worth a quick foray.
blakinho's review against another edition
1.0
Ugh. I find this book incredibly frustrating. Full, bias disclosure (and there is no such thing as an unbiased review or an unbiased reading), I am an anarchist. I believe in Anarchy. Not only do I believe that horizontal, antiauthoritarian organization of society is ideal, I also believe it is the most practical. So imagine my dissappointment upon reading this book revindincating "the left" of the Spanish Civil War by waxing poetic about the Republic while erasing and minimalizing the extremely significant role of anarchists in the fight against Franco.
For starters, there was no such thing as "Republican Barcelona." Barcelona was an anarchist city, run by labor unions, painted red and black, proud bastion of freedom and worker self-organization where the workers mobilized democractic military units and converted civilian factories into arms factories in record time while their self-organized production tripled from what it was under their "lovely" capitalist owners in liberal republican Spain. And then with the format of this book, frustratingly self-absorbed with a narrator narrating his process of writing this book within this book, we get such gems of opinion as the character Angelats getting caught up in the "revolutionary delirium" (you know, of freedom and self-government) to fight with for the "vehement idealism" of the anarchists, but luckily this could not erase his "good Catalonian countryside common sense", so instead of fighting for "enthusiast aficionados" (democratically organized military units which regularly won battles) he fought for the "regular Republican army." And then there is no apparent self-reflection upon how at the end of the war this "good common-sense decision" led to him having to hide from the army which could ostensibly have him executed from desertion.
And then again later in this damn book! We finally get our leftist hero Miralles, who fought among the communists because he saw them as being able to get shit down, so the communists get sympathy as well for being on the right side of history, but apparently not the anarchists, who once again get ignorant, baseless, pot-shot insults such as having "confusing ideas" (what is confusing about Tierra y Libertad?), being guilty of "sowing chaos in the retguard" (remember, production in Barcelona had TRIPLED) and so therefore were possibly justified in having their collectives brutally liquidated, because we have a WAR to WIN. (The next paragraphs are a bit spoiler)
Except the liberal republic didn't fucking win the war, and even if it won the long game by eventually being the winning form of government (nowadays at least), it also succeeded in forgetting all the people who died for it, condemning our heroes like Miralles to exile and oblivion, never getting a fucking thank you, and living in a French retirement home where no one remembers him. This is the future that liberal republics have gotten him.
So, while this book is trying to make a point about the past and the future being inseparable, and about the importance of historical memory for the victims of far right regimes, it shits all over the actual revolutionaries who fought for a world where everyone belongs, no one has to rot in exile, and general human kindness is the basis of everyday life. What a swing and a miss.
For starters, there was no such thing as "Republican Barcelona." Barcelona was an anarchist city, run by labor unions, painted red and black, proud bastion of freedom and worker self-organization where the workers mobilized democractic military units and converted civilian factories into arms factories in record time while their self-organized production tripled from what it was under their "lovely" capitalist owners in liberal republican Spain. And then with the format of this book, frustratingly self-absorbed with a narrator narrating his process of writing this book within this book, we get such gems of opinion as the character Angelats getting caught up in the "revolutionary delirium" (you know, of freedom and self-government) to fight with for the "vehement idealism" of the anarchists, but luckily this could not erase his "good Catalonian countryside common sense", so instead of fighting for "enthusiast aficionados" (democratically organized military units which regularly won battles) he fought for the "regular Republican army." And then there is no apparent self-reflection upon how at the end of the war this "good common-sense decision" led to him having to hide from the army which could ostensibly have him executed from desertion.
And then again later in this damn book! We finally get our leftist hero Miralles, who fought among the communists because he saw them as being able to get shit down, so the communists get sympathy as well for being on the right side of history, but apparently not the anarchists, who once again get ignorant, baseless, pot-shot insults such as having "confusing ideas" (what is confusing about Tierra y Libertad?), being guilty of "sowing chaos in the retguard" (remember, production in Barcelona had TRIPLED) and so therefore were possibly justified in having their collectives brutally liquidated, because we have a WAR to WIN. (The next paragraphs are a bit spoiler)
Except the liberal republic didn't fucking win the war, and even if it won the long game by eventually being the winning form of government (nowadays at least), it also succeeded in forgetting all the people who died for it, condemning our heroes like Miralles to exile and oblivion, never getting a fucking thank you, and living in a French retirement home where no one remembers him. This is the future that liberal republics have gotten him.
So, while this book is trying to make a point about the past and the future being inseparable, and about the importance of historical memory for the victims of far right regimes, it shits all over the actual revolutionaries who fought for a world where everyone belongs, no one has to rot in exile, and general human kindness is the basis of everyday life. What a swing and a miss.
brettcarl's review against another edition
Completely different novel to what was advertised. Instead of a engrossing, thought-provoking story about war and history, we actually get the exhausting ramblings of a journalist/author who seems more concerned with himself than his subject.
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
3.0
'The Imposter' from same author is a far superior novel in my opinion.
mayjasper's review against another edition
2.0
Okay, so this is a book about a writer who is writing a 'true fiction' story and also about him thinking of writing the same 'true fiction' story - that he's already writing.
The story hangs on why an escaped prisoner, who least deserved to live, according to the author, was spared by a soldier who found him hiding in the woods. And who the soldier was.
Neither question is answered.
Am I glad I continued reading to the end? No. And yet I found the character introduced near the end was the most interesting. The novel also gave me more confirmation of the utter vileness of war and how the stupidity/arrogance/narcissism of a handful of people can rain down death and destruction on millions of people. But all the chopping back and forth between writing the story and thinking of writing the story and then not resolving any questions was too frustrating for me.
Reading the end notes about the Spanish Civil war before reading the rest of the book could be helpful if, like me, it's not a subject you are familiar with. It would have been more helpful if they had been at the beginning so that I found them before I started.
The story hangs on why an escaped prisoner, who least deserved to live, according to the author, was spared by a soldier who found him hiding in the woods. And who the soldier was.
Neither question is answered.
Am I glad I continued reading to the end? No. And yet I found the character introduced near the end was the most interesting. The novel also gave me more confirmation of the utter vileness of war and how the stupidity/arrogance/narcissism of a handful of people can rain down death and destruction on millions of people. But all the chopping back and forth between writing the story and thinking of writing the story and then not resolving any questions was too frustrating for me.
Reading the end notes about the Spanish Civil war before reading the rest of the book could be helpful if, like me, it's not a subject you are familiar with. It would have been more helpful if they had been at the beginning so that I found them before I started.
bornslippy's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75