Spanish Literature Series

Banned for many years by the Franco regime, Cela's masterpiece presents a panoramic view of the degradation and suffering of the lower-middle class in post-Civil War Spain. Readers are introduced to over a hundred characters through a series of interlocking vignettes, transforming this book from a social document into a towering work of inventive fiction. Filled with violence, hunger, and compassion, The Hive captures the ambitions and constraints of life under a dictatorship.

Christ Versus Arizona

by Camilo Jose Cela

Published 18 October 2007

Christ versus Arizona turns on the events in 1881 that surrounded the shootout at the OK Corral, where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and the McLaurys. Set against a backdrop of an Arizona influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the westward expansion of the United States, the story is a bravura performance by the 1989 Nobel Prize-winning author.

A monologue by the naïve, unreliable, and uneducated Wendell L. Espana, the book weaves together hundreds of characters and a torrent of interconnected anecdotes, some true, some fabricated. Wendell’s story is a document of the vast array of ills that welcomed the dawning of the twentieth century, ills that continue to shape our world in the new millennium.