'La Verdad sobre el caso Savolta' was the great novel of the Spanish Transition era and made its author a bestseller. This is the story of how this great book came to be.
Now that fifty years have passed since almost everything happened, it's also time to reveal the whole truth about the Mendoza case. It was the year of grace—or not, depending on how you look at it—of 1975, when great historical wonders happened, such as the dictator's well-known death and also, in the more literally prosaic field, the publication of a book that seemed like a history book but was a novel, written by a young writer whose debut work would astonish our literary world.
At the age of 26, and after hiding another short novel in the drawer of oblivion, a precocious writer named Eduardo Mendoza put the finishing touches to his first great novel, La Verdad sobre el caso Savolta. It went through several publishers until one decided to take the plunge and submit it for censorship. It received literally horrific comments, which for one reason or another put the manuscript on hold.
By Javier Martín-Domínguez
