I liked the way of telling the story but the many detailed descriptions of battle scenes made the book boring for me. ( )

Hay que comenzar por lo mas importante... este libro no es lo que esperaba, y en eso estriba en gran parte mi decepción.

Cercas utiliza una mezcla entre ficción e investigación historica que pudiera funcionar en ocasiones pero que en este caso resulta seca y poco interesante. La historia de un soldado franquista que muere a los 19 años y sobre quien no existe suficiente documentación no es exactamente la receta para un best seller. Vale decir que las partes mas interesantes de esta obra son aquellas en las que el autor desmenuza y filosófa sobre la vida de su fenecido tio abuelo.

El mejor puntonde la historia es cuando se revela que Manuel Mena regresa a la guerra por ultima vez no por conviccion sino para prevenir que su hermano, casado y con hijos tenga que ir en su lugar. ( )

J’ai remarqué la couverture du livre « Le monarque des ombres » de Javier Cercas dès sa parution.

Cet enfant dans son costume militaire, la tête à demi-baissée, semble interroger. On peut deviner une cigarette dans sa main, pudiquement cachée par le politiquement correct du moment. Inquiet, il regarde la caméra et malgré tout, se laisse photographier. Mais, c’est sa jeunesse presque imberbe qui frappe !

Devenu, sans le vouloir, le héros d’une famille, notamment pour la mère de Javier Cercas, cet homme est son grand-oncle. Et, il est mort lors de la bataille de l’Ebre. Son nom est Manuel Mena, son habit celui des franquistes. Et, Javier Cercas affronte la honte, presque chaque jour, d’avoir ce héros martyr mais phalangiste, lui l’homme de gauche convaincu !
La suite ici
https://vagabondageautourdesoi.com/2019/01/02/lire-le-monarque-des-ombres-javier... ( )

D’ailleurs, peut-on être un jeune homme noble et pur et en même temps lutter pour une mauvaise cause ?
(p.141, Chapitre 7).

Je me souviens avoir lu Les Soldats de Salamine il y a bien longtemps, et être plutôt restée circonspecte, un peu sur le bord de la route, surtout au vu des critiques élogieuses qui l’avaient accueilli. Mais en voyant ce titre en librairie peu après sa sortie, je n’ai pas été longue à décider de donner une seconde chance à cet auteur. Titre énigmatique, auteur qui s’aventure de l’autre côté du miroir, il y avait en effet de quoi me tenter.
J’ai mis un peu de temps ensuite pour commencer ma lecture, mais maintenant que c’est chose faite, il me faut essayer mettre de l’ordre dans mes idées. Le sujet, d’abord. Javier Cercas, qui explore inlassablement la guerre civile espagnole, se décide, après moultes tergiversations, à écrire sur un de ses oncles, phalangiste, mort à 19 ans sur le front, et pendant longtemps, héros de la famille. Mais depuis, les caprices de l’histoire ont fait de cet ancien héros un ancêtre encombrant. Celui qui a fait les mauvais choix, qui s’est retrouvé du mauvais côté. Je me suis sentie flouée à plusieurs reprises pendant ma lecture, car le personnage de Manuel Mena reste évanescent tout au long du récit. On ne connaîtra rien de ses aspirations intimes, de ses projets et désirs. Normal pour un homme mort si jeune et sans avoir rien laissé derrière lui.
Mais il m’a fallu du temps pour réaliser que Manuel Mena est finalement un prétexte ici. Prétexte à quoi, c’est une question complexe, car ce livre explore plusieurs voies, plusieurs sujets et arrive, grâce à l’écriture toute en contrôle de Javier Cercas à les faire tenir ensemble. Non à les relier pour en faire un tout cohérent, mais à les faire cohabiter et se succéder sans que cela paraisse artificiel ou décousu. On revisite l’histoire espagnole du début du XXème siècle (et j’ai souvent eu l’impression de ne pas avoir assez de connaissances préalables pour comprendre toute la subtilité du discours de Cercas), en particulier l’évolution sociale et économique de la société, et comment celle-ci interagit avec son évolution politique. On réfléchit à l’engagement politique, et à son lien possible avec un engagement militaire. On réfléchit aussi beaucoup à la mémoire, qu’elle soit individuelle, familiale ou collective : les liens entre mémoire et vérité, l’importance à donner aux détails (dans quel chambre est mort un homme, où et à quelle heure du jour ou de la nuit a-t-il été blessé), la construction d’un roman familial, le poids d’un héritage par définition non choisi…
C’est un livre très riche, une lecture dont on ressort en se sentant à la fois plus averti et plus rempli de questions. Il faut pour cela s’adapter à la structure du récit, cette alternance de « je » et de « il » utilisés par l’auteur pour parler de lui-même selon la perspective de l’auteur par rapport à l’histoire qu’il raconte (celle de son oncle ou celle de son enquête à lui), passer outre quelques digressions que j’ai trouvées sans intérêt (comme les raisons du divorce de son ami cinéaste). Mais ce livre, s’il n’est pas facile à lire, vaut qu’on lui consacre un peu de temps et d’énergie. Et l’on apprendra alors qui est le monarque des Ombres et l’on pourra se demander si c’est une place si enviable que cela, même si beaucoup l’ont choisie, consciemment ou poussés par les circonstances. Beau travail sur la mémoire, sur l’engagement et sur ce qui relie parfois les deux.

What I realised was that the protagonist of The Odyssey was the exact opposite of the protagonist of The Iliad: Achilles is the man of a short life and glorious death, who dies at the youthful peak of his beauty and his valour and thus achieves immortality, the man who defeats death through kalos thanatos, a beautiful death that represents the culmination of a beautiful life; Odysseus, on the other hand, is the polar opposite: the man who returns home to live a long life blessed by fidelity to Penelope, to Ithaca and to himself, although in the end he reaches old age and after this life there is no other.

I thought: Uncle Manolo didn't die for his country, Mamá. He didn't die to defend you and your grandmother Carolina and your family. He died for nothing, because they deceived him and made him believe he was defending his interests when he was actually defending other people's interests and that he was risking his life for his own people when he was risking it for others.

In his latest work of auto-fiction, the acclaimed Spanish writer Javier Cercas turns his gaze for the first time on his own family, namely his maternal great-uncle Manuel Mena, who was killed at the age of 19 while fighting for the right wing Falangists in the Battle of Ebro in 1938, during the height of the Spanish Civil War. Manolo's death was and remained devastating to Cercas's mother, and because Mena fought for a group that was later aligned with the fascists led by General Francisco Franco, it proved embarrassing to Cercas and cast a shadow over his life as well.

Javier Cercas was born in Ibahernando, a small village in the autonomous community of Extremadura in western Spain, close to the country's border with Portugal. His mother Blanca met her future husband there, and when he was a child they moved to Girona, a moderate sized city in Catalunya, which suffered greatly for five decades under Franco's rule due to its role in the Republican resistance during the war. The Mena and Cercas families held some degree of status in Ibahernando, although they were far from prosperous, but they were anonymous strangers in Girona, and Blanca could not talk about her beloved uncle Manolo to any of her neighbors, as he was on the "wrong side" of the war.

After resisting repeated requests by his mother and other relatives to investigate Manolo's life and write a book about him, the narrator Javier Cercas ultimately and reluctantly decides to do so, by speaking with his family, visiting Ibahernando, where his mother still had a house, talking with people there who knew his great uncle, and exploring the battle sites where Mena was wounded, along with the former hospital where he died. During his travels Cercas re-reads translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey as a diversion, and in doing so he realizes that his uncle is viewed as a tragic hero by his mother and many older people in Ibahernando, as he was an idealistic young man who was studious and hoped to study law, but chose to postpone his plans to fight with the Falangists against the Second Spanish Republic, in the cause of national unity, order and equality for all Spaniards.

As Cercas slowly uncovers more about Mena from those who knew him best, he learns that, toward the end of his life, Manolo became more disillusioned about the Falangist cause and the great toll that the war was taking on the country. However, he returned to the battlefield one last time, in an act of familial obligation, and was killed shortly afterward in one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Cercas uses Manolo's death to demonstrate the futility of the Spanish Civil War and most other wars, which have been fought by untold millions of young men and women who gave their lives not for freedom or better lives for themselves, their families and their neighbors, but rather for the wealthy and powerful, whose massive egos on both sides of this war led to hundreds of thousands of deaths that ultimately benefitted no one save for Franco, the fascist leadership, and the Generalíssimo's most loyal supporters.

The ultimate question that Cercas struggles to answer is: "What is a hero?" Did Manolo act heroically in fighting alongside the Falangists? Was his death in vain? Did his family or community benefit from his sacrifice? Is it better to be Achilles, the lord of all the dead, who is celebrated by many but whose life is cut short before he can fully enjoy it, or Odysseus, who returns from battle to lead a long but mediocre life?

I found Lord of All the Dead to be a thought provoking novel, which was a bit of a slog at times in the overly detailed descriptions of battles that Manuel Mena fought in, but the analysis of his life at the end was very well done, as were the descriptions of Cercas's mother, his family, the few remaining residents of Ibahernando, and himself. The book isn't as much of a page turner as his two most recent novels, Outlaws and The Impostor, were, but it was ultimately very rewarding and did provide much food for thought, about the Spanish Civil War, postwar and post-Franco Spain, war in general, and the present political climate in the western world. ( )