Novel
The Fallen
Si te dicen que caí
Juan Marsé · 1973
Synopsis
Barcelona, in the first years after the war. Around the rag-and-bone shop where Java lives, a gang of kids from a slum neighbourhood, Sarnita, Mingo and others, spend time with the girls of an orphanage in the Guinardó. With no toys, they tell each other “aventis”, stories where what they know is mixed with what they invent, full of tortures, police investigations and desires. Java, who is hiding his brother, a former activist, at home, is commissioned by a rich woman to find a prostitute, and approaches a war invalid, Conrado, who pays to watch.
Context
Rejected by the censors, the novel appeared in Mexico City in 1973 from Novaro and won there the same year the México international novel prize; it could be sold in Spain only after Franco's death. The title is a line from the Falange anthem, taken backwards. More than forty characters, parallel narratives that cross and voices that contradict one another make memory a fiction among others. The author produced a corrected and definitive version with Seix Barral in 1989.
Who it is for
A novel of many voices and no chronology, in the language of the street; one must accept not untangling what was lived from what was invented.
Prizes and reception
Winner of the Mexico International Novel Prize the year it was published, it was adapted for the screen by Vicente Aranda in 1989, with Victoria Abril and Jorge Sanz.
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