Procession of Shadows (Spanish Literature Series)

Ríos’s first novel, at last translated into English.

In the late ’60s, Julián Ríos began work on what would have been his very first novel, but fearing that it wouldn’t pass the stringent Spanish censorship under Franco, decided not to submit the completed book to publishers. Soon distracted by what would be his magnum opus—the Larva series—the manuscript was set aside and forgotten, until the author found and dusted it off almost fifty years later. Quite unlike his later postmodernist work, the short and bitter Procession of Shadows is filled with stories of love, war, and vengeance, focusing on the tiny, remote village of Tamoga—a place where vendettas are passed down from generation to generation, and where violence has left its traces in every corner. A Winesburg, Ohio for the end times, Procession of Shadows shows us a very different side of the usually playful Ríos: dark, direct, and pitiless.