Lord of All the Dead

Praise

“A powerful work of D.I.Y. history.” —The New Yorker

“There is no one writing in English like this: engaged humanity achieving a hard-won wisdom. It is powerful stuff.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“A book of reportage through which the dead walk with all the vibrancy of the living. . . . A fact-based but also imaginative work that excavates history and places it into the present.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A powerful and strikingly original portrait of a country whose history is a nightmare from which it cannot wake.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“A contribution to healing the wounds that remain open in Spain to this day. . . . Cercas keeps his readers curious to the end.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A brave, persuasive novel.” —El País

“A beautiful, moving story. . . . Cercas is a marvelous writer, and his character studies . . . are masterly. Ultimately, grappling with the enormously nuanced, continuing story of sacrifice, passion, and dishonor allowed for significant forgiveness and release.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A remarkable act of personal history: brave, revelatory, and unflinchingly honest.” —William Boyd

“Cercas’s candid wranglings with how to tell this tale . . . make him a wonderfully warm and wise guide through this sad, small chapter of the Spanish Civil War.” —The Times (London)

“A subversive and disenchanted view of war in general and the Spanish conflict in particular. . . . It can be moving, unexpectedly funny, racy, demotic or deadpan.” —The Spectator

“[A] cleverly crafted memoir. . . . While reflecting on his own life and family, Cercas vividly portrays a complex figure.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“I couldn’t put the book down. . . . Marvelously written. . . . A major achievement, in historical, literary, and moral terms.” —Jay Nordlinger, National Review

“A fascinating, complicated portrait of a young soldier driven to action by the crises of his time and of the present-day relative who seeks to understand him. . . . Cercas employs the storytelling techniques of dramatic literature to confront [an] uncomfortable facet of his family’s and his country’s history. . . . [He] pulls the reader into his investigative journey.” —Booklist

“A magisterial book on the hazardous trajectory of one man.” —La Croix