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Fiction

As rulas de Bakunin

By Antón Riveiro Coello

About this book

The Civil War and Anarchism are the base for this historic novel that was reissued already four times. A novel that, as the author says, “allowed me to live other lives”.

The novel was awarded the Premio García Barros in 2000. As rulas de Bakunin is sensitive to the losers, the defeated. Antón Riveiro Coello, one of Galicia’s contemporary masters of prose, brings back the memory of the lost and is rebellious at the same time. He brings back the memory of the silent heroes who fought for freedom. Here we have the life of Camilio Sabio Doldán, an almost one hundred-year old anarchist who lived through war, prison and exile. This is a novel that moves and shocks, that shows us the intense fear of the landscapes of the past.

Book fragment

Overwhelmed by a pang of nostalgia that brings tears to his eyes, Camilo lets his exhausted body fall on the back of the sofa and closes the folder where he has all the letters that he has written to his wife in recent years, the letters that he has hidden as a teenager in love hides her diary. The mountain Xalo is bright in the morning and it seems to be falling slightly in the foamy and purifying light. In the garden, a crow pecks at an apple that has fallen from the tree and a goldfinch chirps, embedded in the cherry trees of Telva. Lázaro is not up yet and thus Camilo decides to continue with his phone calls. He dials the numbers like an automated bureaucrat, and at the other end of the line there is a woman whom he asks, with his voice moist with nostalgia, whether they have the book. The woman, the librarian, confirms that the book is in the files of the Ateneo but some years back some A.D.B. with address on Rúa do Vilar, Santiago de Compostela, had convinced the director of the library with thirty thousand pesetas to sell the only copy they had left. Camilo writes down the whole address and feels the restlessness in his whole body.