Translation Rights TQE / The Parable of Carmen the Queen

After Venganzas (Vengeance), a delightful collection of short stories, and Hijas de Eva (Eve’s Daughters), a splendid novel which the critics deservedly included among the best of the Spanish picaresque tradition, we recovered La parábola de Carmen la Reina (The Parable of Carmen the Queen), the novel with which Manuel Talens broke into the literary scene in 1992, and which, due to editorial whimsy, had become difficult to find.

The story takes place in Artefa, a small, remote village in the mountainous Alpujarras of Granada. Its only street sees the comings and goings of a multitude of characters, whose destinies are inextricably linked with the common destiny of Spain’s turbulent 19th century. Under the seemingly eternal ruling of its different tyrants, a succession of generations of “Artefenians” confront their authority, culminating with the apparition of Carmen la Reina, the anarchist liberator who, together with doctor Lucas Toledano, will uselessly trade her life for freedom. La parábola de Carmen la Reina, which begins as a simple rural tale, becomes a vast historical fresco, both playful and pessimistic, depicting a society which is suffocated by religion, violence, epidemic and poverty: a society which, whilst seeing the signs of the end of its bitter fuedalism, succumbs to the difficulties of the war of Independence, the Cádiz Courts, absolutism once again, the liberal revolution, and the first Republic.

Manuel Talens was born in Granada in 1948, and graduated from the city’s university with a degree in medicine. He later completed his studies in Paris and Montreal. Upon his return to Spain, he settled in Valencia, where he decided to dedicate himself to literature. Alongside his work as a novelist, he regularly collaborates in the opinion columns of the Valencian edition of the newspaper El País. He has also translated into Spanish works of fiction and semiotic texts, cinema and narrative.