Soldiers of Salamis

It definitely would’ve been to my advantage to know more about history and especially Spanish history to follow this book better. When I’m reading about historical events and names my eyes tend to glaze over and I find myself finishing a page of the book without retaining anything that was written on it. That being said, the parts that weren’t solely talking names and villages in Spain and battles and instead were about Cercas’ process of writing the book and his personal life were more engaging for me. I liked the way Cercas wrote; his self-deprecating and dry sense of humour was entertaining for me, and I loved his girlfriend Conchi, she was hilarious.

The actual story that Cercas chose to write about, the mysterious identity of the militiaman who decided to spare Rafael Sánchez Mazas’ life, was sort of interesting but I’m not sure if I would choose to read a book about it in my own time. First of all, this can’t be the only time something like that has occurred? Maybe it’s only something schematic I’ve seen in movies, but is it that uncommon to have two soldiers share a moment where they remember they are just two people, and perhaps one doesn’t deserve to die, and thus a life is spared? I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something. I think this book was probably super interesting to people who had personal connections to it, whether that be people they knew in the war or who knew the characters of the story, or if they’ve somehow heard of the mystery and were also intrigued to know who the mysterious militiaman was, though I doubt the likelihood of that one. It just didn’t really do it for me, but I did like reading the whole process of how Cercas retrieved his information and built his story. I liked how obsessive he got about figuring out what really happened.

I was surprised to learn in the lecture video how much of this book is fiction, when the entire time Cercas is insisting it’s a “true tale.” A lot of books we read are fictional, and we know that, but when they’re calling themselves factual when they’re actually fictional is that a wrongdoing? My question is, does it bother you that Cercas was insisting he was writing a true tale when so much of it was a work of fiction?