Novel
Nada
Carmen Laforet · 1945
Synopsis
Andrea, an eighteen-year-old orphan, arrives in Barcelona in the aftermath of the civil war to study at the university. She moves in with her grandmother on Calle Aribau, in a dilapidated flat where her aunt Angustias, who keeps her under her thumb, her uncles Román and Juan, Juan's wife Gloria, and a maid also live. Hunger, filth, violence and hatred reign there. At the university, she befriends Ena, a rich girl who opens another world to her. Andrea tells of that year many years later.
Context
The novel received the first Nadal Prize in January 1945, awarded for the 1944 title, and appeared the same year from Ediciones Destino; it caused a sensation. It passed the censors by avoiding any direct treatment of the harshness of the regime, and it is classed in existentialist literature of the post-war period. The author refused to see it as an autobiography, although she had herself been a student in Barcelona. Edgar Neville made a film of it in 1947; Edith Grossman retranslated it into English in 2007.
Who it is for
A short novel, in the first person, in a prose attuned to impressions; hunger is everywhere in it.
Prizes and reception
First winner of the Nadal Prize, Fastenrath Prize in 1948; included by El Mundo among the hundred best Spanish novels of the century.