Novel
Our Father San Daniel
Nuestro Padre San Daniel
Gabriel Miró · 1921
Opening lines
Dice el señor Espuch y Loriga que no hay, en todo el término de Oleza, casa-heredad de tan claro renombre como el «Olivar de Nuestro Padre», de la familia Egea y Pérez Motos.
Señor Espuch y Loriga says that in all the district of Oleza there is no estate of such bright renown as the “Olive Grove of Our Father”, belonging to the Egea y Pérez Motos family.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Oleza, a town in the Levant, in the last third of the nineteenth century, torpid and devoted to its patron saint, San Daniel, from whom dubious miracles are awaited. The novel follows the lives of its inhabitants, priests, devout believers and families, torn between their natural inclinations, social pressure and intolerance; the most credulous devotion stands alongside a façade of morality that masks hypocrisy. The town's passions, rivalries and ceremonies count for as much as the plot, in a prose attentive to sensations.
Context
Published in 1921, the novel forms a diptych with El obispo leproso, published in 1926. Oleza there transposes Orihuela, the town where the author had grown up. His view of devotion and religious customs caused a scandal on publication. The cycle has been adapted for television, and an English translation appeared in 2011 in Manila, published by the Instituto Cervantes and the University of Santo Tomas, who planned to add the sequel.
Who it is for
A slow novel, in which sensations and descriptions matter more than action, in a rich and demanding language.
Prizes and reception
Regarded, together with the sequel that completes it, as its author's masterpiece; translated into English under the title Our Father San Daniel.
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