Joan Sales, born in Barcelona in 1912, was a Republican commander during the Civil War. After the defeat he spent time in French concentration camps and finally went into exile in Mexico. In 1948 he returned to Catalonia determined to take advantage of the loopholes in Franco’s censorship to publish books in Catalan. Communist in his youth and Catholic as he grew older, Sales was a tireless editor as well as the translator of authors such as Dostoevsky and Kazantzakis.
«I believe that a writer must embody a testimony of truth»: with this conviction, Joan Sales published novels, poetry, and epistolary exchanges with some of the most important intellectuals of his time. His work, influenced by Dostoevsky and Bernanos, was written in a dynamic style and with the engagement of a soldier, and explicitly explores the political, social and religious tensions he lived through.
«Incerta Glòria is the best novel written in the Iberian Peninsula in the XXth Century.»
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