Time of Silence

A young cancer researcher ventures through the streets, slums, and subcultures of Francoist Madrid in this widely roving, linguistically inventive novel—a sort of Spanish Ulysses, but infused with the grotesquerie and dark comedy of Goya—available here in a new translation and with previously censored material restored.

This novel of abortion and murder set in the squalor of the first decade of General Franco’s dictatorship follows a few days in the life of Don Pedro, a cancer research scientist with Nobel ambitions. His dallying with literary and philosophical coteries, his hunt for the right strain of experimental mice in Madrid’s slums, and the table talk at his boardinghouse are depicted here with anything but the social realism one might expect of a mid-twentieth century Spanish novel. Instead, Luis Martín-Santos presents us with an altogether innovative stream of consciousness, unfurling a lyrical yet jaundiced tableau of a society hitting rock bottom after years of authoritarian rule.

Published in 1962, Time of Silence is a masterpiece of modern Spanish fiction. Its vision of depressed individuals struggling to survive makes it a fictional fleur du mal for our times. Martín-Santos draws on the black humor of Goya and the wit of Joyce to create a picture of a world beyond hope, redeemed solely by genial self-mockery. Peter Bush’s new translation gloriously restores all that was previously axed by Spanish censors.