The Island

Local Description

'This is an old and wicked island. An island of Phoenicians and merchants, of bloodsuckers and frauds.'

Ana Maria Matute's 1959 novel (original title Primera memoria) is a stifling story of rebellious adolescence, narrated by Matia, as she struggles against her domineering grandmother, schemes with her mercurial cousin Borja and begins to fall in love with the strange boy Manuel.

Steeped in myth, fairy tale and biblical allusion, the novel depicts Mallorca as an enchanted but wicked island, a lost Eden and Never Never Land combined, where the sun burns through stained glass windows and the wind tears itself on the agaves. Ostensibly concerned with Matia's anxieties about entering the adult world, this internal conflict is set against the much wider, deeper, and more frightening conflict of the civil war as it plays out almost secretly on the island, set in turn against the backdrop of the Inquisition's mass burning of Jews in previous centuries. These two conflicts shimmer at the edges of Matia's highly subjective account of her life on the island, where life is drawn along painful and divisive lines.

Author Biography: Born in Barcelona in 1925, Ana Maria Matute (d. 2014) began her career as a novelist in the late 1940s, quickly becoming established as one of the most significant literary voices of the Spanish post-war period. In spite of singularly harsh treatment by the Francoist censor - which described her as irreverent and immoral, banned her from engaging in journalistic activities, and forced her to alter or delay the publication of her writing for both adults and children - Matute's lyrical prose style and sensitive treatment of both conflict and childhood earned her both the Premio Nadal (for Primera memoria) and Spain's National Prize for Literature in 1959, a rare seat in the Real Academia Espa?ola in 1996, and the Spanish-speaking world's most coveted literary prize, the Premio Cervantes, in 2010. She is, to date, one of only four female authors to have received it.

Promotional Information: <b>A searing coming-of-age tale by one of the greatest Spanish writers of the 20th century, set on the island of Mallorca during the Spanish Civil War.

Description

'This is an old and wicked island. An island of Phoenicians and merchants, of bloodsuckers and frauds'

Expelled from her convent school for kicking the prioress, and abandoned by her father when her mother dies, rebellious teenager Matia is sent to live with her domineering grandmother on the island of Mallorca. In the hot, oppressive stillness of an adolescent summer, she learns to scheme with her cousin Borja, and finds herself increasingly drawn to the strange outsider Manuel. But civil war has come to Spain, and it will teach Matia about the adult world in ways she could not foresee.

This powerful, lyrical coming-of-age novel depicts Mallorca as an enchanted island, a lost Eden and a Never Land combined, where ancient hatreds and present-day passions collide.