The Spanish novel in a turbulent century.This collection of studies by eighteen prominent theorists and critics offers a diverse panorama of the modern Spanish novel seen through the prism of Spain's recent political, cultural and ideological history. It considers the development of the novel as a social mirror and as a changing literary form, torn between the tradition of stern realism and the aesthetics of rupture affecting all Western literature from the Avant-Garde to the Postmodern age. While some essays emphasise the Spanish cultural context and canonical writers, others are of a broader nature, grouping lesser-known writers under certain literary tendencies: the metaphysical novel, the urban novel, recuperative accounts of the Civil War, feminine first-person narrations, and the rise of the popular detective, historical, and erotic novels. Three studies address the resurgence of the Catalan, Basque and Galician novel and their departure from a poetics of identity to one of global concerns. Interdisciplinary approaches address the reciprocal impacts of literature and cinema, and the effects of the marketplace on the consumption of fiction are not forgotten. The Companion provides ample bibliographies and a valuable chronology, while all titles and quotations are translated into English. Contributors: Marta E. Altisent, Katarzyna Olga Beilin, Ramón Buckley, José F. Colmeiro, Stacey Dolgin Casado, Sebastiaan Faber, David K. Herzberger, Carlos Alex Longhurst, Kathleen N. March, Cristina Martínez-Carazo, Alfredo Martínez Expósito, Nina L. Molinaro, Gonzalo Navajas, Mari Jose Olaziregi, Janet D. Pérez, Randolph D. Pope, Josep Miquel Sobrer, H. Rosi Song.

IntroductionFrom Local to Global History. The Spanish Novel in the Twentieth Century - Gonzalo NavajasNew Trends in the Early Twentieth-Century Novel - C Alex LonghurstTales from the Avant-Garde - Ramón BuckleyFrom Experiment to Experience: The Social Realist Novel - Janet Perez, Book ReviewsThe Novel of the Spanish Civil War: From Militancy to Reconciliation - Sebastiaan FaberDemythification in the Novels of Luis Martín-Santos and Juan Goytisolo - Stacey Dolgin CasadoHistorical and Metahistorical Fiction in Post-Civil War and Democratic Spain - David K HerzbergerThe Spanish Detective Novel as a Political Genre - Jose F ColmeiroMadrid in the Twentieth-Century Novel: Attempting to Describe a Moving Target - Randolph D PopeFictional Mirrors of Barcelona (and Barcelonians) - Marta E AltisentNarrating Women in the Postwar Peninsular Novel - Nina MolinaroNew Sexual and Gender Paradigms in Contemporary Spanish Fiction - Alfredo Martinez ExpositoDisquieting Realism: Postmodern and Beyond - Katarzyna Olga BeilinCultural Warfare at the End of the Millennium: The Anti-conformist Fiction of the Spanish 'Generation X' - H. Rosi SongFilm, Politics and the Novel - Cristina Martinez CarazoThe Catalan Novel and the Evaporation of Modernity - Josep Miquel SobrerThe Galician Novel: An Eternal Work in Progress - Kathleen MarchThe Evolution of Basque Fiction in the Twentieth Century - Mari Jose Olaziregi