The coincidence between Rafael Nadal writer With the tennis player Rafael Nadal, in a nominal search in any internet search engine, he always opts for the athlete. Hence the writer has adapted his signature and seal to «Rafel nadal«, Extirpating the« a »as a necessary differentiating syncope.
And the truth is that the work deserves it. Because the Catalan writer, practically dedicated to the profession of writing since 2014 (after working as a journalist in various media), presents us with great historical fictions in an extended period between the melancholy of the nineteenth century and the tumult of the twentieth century in Europe.
And it is there, in that scenario of little more than a century that brings together the greatest transformations, the most ominous wars but also the most remarkable advances in every field, where Rafel Nadal shows off his talents as a writer turned chronicler of the most relevant of any time: the intrahistories, the evolution of the people who, in the mimicry of the characters, make us feel the story beyond a mere official documentation, which, everything is said in passing, the author also handles with completeness and precision.
Top 3 recommended books by Rafel Nadal
Mrs. Stendhal
The true survivors of the wars appear among the punished people who assume their victims as best they can. A child who is taken from his mother on the last day of the Civil War finds his only shelter in Mrs. Stendhal's arms in which to continue being a child loved by a mother figure.
The postwar period is that empty space, that temporary nothingness in which everything has disappeared and lives try to find new routines in the midst of the marked need and the pressing deficiencies.
Lluc is that child who only through his innocence can understand a chaotic world like normality, which overcomes absences through presences to which he clings to continue feeling stolen love.
In other recent works about the Spanish Civil War we know perspectives of combatants or family sagas, or secrets of state hidden in the military action. But only in this book Mrs. Stendhal we will recover the most important perspective, that of childlike innocence in the face of the reality of weapons.
Because after the war, the worst may be yet to come. The victors tend to be even more cruel when they know themselves superior. The desire to exterminate an enemy that no longer exists continues to spread over anyone who could have been on the other side.
Awakened the cruelty of war, its embers are not easy to extinguish with the last shot. Accustomed to exalting hatred, the victors seek continual revenge. The postwar period in a civil conflict is just that, an execution of the defeated, an end without an armistice. No matter how innocent you are, you can always be the new victim.
But in this work we also find hope. Lluc hopes to be a child and clings to promises of a better future. Through his eyes and his primary emotions we scrutinize a reality whose violent interiorities escape the understanding of tender childhood, and also the understanding of any reader.
The son of the Italian
The furtive loves, the passions released in the darkest days of a conflict as atrocious as the Second World War end up composing a strange map of unpredictable destinies. Something like this happens in this plot composed since the fall of Mussolini in 1943.
With the consequent Italian armistice agreed with the allies, immediately the battleship Roma of the Italian Regia Marina became an enemy of Nazi Germany.
The accurate guided missiles from the German planes hit the ship on the bottom of the sea on September 9, 43. The point is that Nadal focuses on the survivors among so many fatalities.
Refugees due to circumstantial imperatives in Spanish territory, in Caldes de Malavella, the sailors spent several days among the people of the place. Mateu is the fruit of one of those passionate encounters between a young sailor and a native girl.
The relationship ended up breaking down when their son together was old enough to burn details, gestures, sounds ... Then the father disappeared without Mateu really knowing about this paternity.
They were hard days and things happened marked by moral imperatives of another dimension. Many years later, Mateu has gathered information necessary to learn about the secret of his existence.
It may be too late, sixty years may be too long. But his mother has already passed away and nothing stops him in a search that marks, in the fire of the most intense questions, the foundation of his entire existence always far from its origins.
The curse of the Palmisano
A novel with a local setting but that ends up meaning itself as a great plot around how everything can change in an instant, from prosperity to friendship or love.
The character of Vitantonio Palmisano reminds us of that lapidary phrase by Rolland: "A hero is one who does everything he can", beyond other heroics extended throughout history for unforgettable female protagonists such as Donata or Giovanna.
The point is that they all remind us that there is no greater odyssey than survival in hard times. And precisely the current discovery from which history is born ends up discovering how everyone is a loser in one war or another, the Great War or the Second World War.
The surnames of doom changes from one moment to the next. And the invitation to reflection and inquiry that surprises the discoverer of the sinister coincidences end up leading us to an exciting plot about how life continues to make its way, always.
