Condenada y Otros Cuentos

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, the Spanish naturalist who scandalized Europe with novels of passion and poverty, brings that same ferocious intensity to these seventeen stories. Here are tales of fishermen facing drownings and damnation, of lovers destroyed by jealousy and circumstance, of ordinary men driven to extraordinary cruelty. The sea features as both livelihood and metaphor, its depths reflecting the turbulent interiors of Ibáñez's characters. Some stories puncture the pretensions of officials and bourgeois pretenders; others excavate the psychology of obsession and revenge. The collection moves from the visceral drama of "Hombre al agua!" to the eerie folkloric terror of "El ogro" to the sharp social satire of "Un funcionario." Ibáñez writes with the muscular prose of a man who knew Valencia's rice fields and port cities intimately, and who believed literature should wound as much as illuminate. These are stories for readers who want fiction that tastes of salt, blood, and the particular desperation of lives lived at the margins.