Author: Julia Navarro
- Fiction
- Plaza & Janés
- ISBN: Tú no matarás
- Release Date: 12-11-2018
Synopsis
“You won’t kill, my child, you won’t kill. Because no man is the same after having taken the life of another man.” Fernando, a young editor who is the son of a persecuted republican, decides to flee from a Spain suffering from civil war. He is accompanied on his adventure by his friends Catalina and Eulogio, each escaping their own circumstances. The three young people experience a great story of friendship and loyalty as they traverse settings like the Alexandria of World War II, occupied Paris, Lisbon, Prague, Boston, and Santiago in Chile. A song of friendship. Madrid, 1941. Fernando, Catalina, and Eulogio have grown up together in a Madrid neighborhood near the Encarnación convent. The Civil War has just ended and they are all attempting to overcome the pain it has caused in their lives and those of their loved ones. Fernando lives with his mother, Isabel, awaiting the release of his father, who has been jailed for his republican ideals, and counting on a pardon that never comes. Catalina lives on the same street as the convent. Her family has been ruined during the war, and, to face their debts, her father intends to marry her to a man for whom she feels nothing. Eulogio is the one who has lost the most due to the war. His father died fighting, and he himself was crippled from a heroic act in which he saved the life of Marvin, a young U.S. Hispanist who arrived in Spain in 1936 to study Golden Age literature and later decided to stay and capture the pain of war in a famous poetry collection. The future prospects seem ever bleaker for the three young people who decide to unite their destinies and start a new life far from Madrid in order to save what little they have left.
Tú no matarás respira el aroma de Dime quien soy y Dispara yo ya estoy muerto y es, en palabras de Julia Navarro, “una novela de perdedores donde abordo la culpa, la venganza y el peso de la conciencia, que condicionan nuestras decisiones. Es, asimismo, un homenaje a los editores, a las librerías y, en definitiva, al lector que todos llevamos dentro”. La novela relata la amistad entre Fernando, joven editor hijo de un republicano represaliado, Catalina y Eulogio, que deciden huir de una España azotada por la Guerra Civil escapando de sus propias circunstancias. Durante su exilio recorrerán escenarios como la Alejandría de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el París ocupado, Lisboa, Praga, Boston o Santiago de Chile. La novela, muy ambiciosa en la creación de personajes y tramas, se divide en tres libros y cada uno de ellos tiene lugar en un escenario principal: Madrid, Alejandría y París. Una historia que encierra muchas novelas ya que el amor por los libros y la literatura es el motor de muchos de sus personajes.
