No Pasaran

Hope, resignation, despair, sadness, humour, confusion, ruthlessness, compassion, kindness, generosity, and love inhabit Pete Ayrton’s anthology of writings from the Spanish Civil War: there is little sense of certainty and still less of triumphalism among the bewilderingly diverse Republican and Nationalist coalitions, all shades of which are represented here. Previous collections privileged the writings of the International Brigades over those of the Spanish, sometimes excluding them altogether. This book corrects the balance: by far the largest contingent of its thirty-five writers are Spanish, including Manuel Rivas, Javier Cercas, Arturo Barea, Joan Sales, and Chaves Nogales.