Uncertain Glory

SPAIN, 1937.

Posted to the Aragonese front, Lieutenant Lluis Ruscalleda eschews the drunken antics of his comrades and goes in search of intrigue. But the lady of Castel de Olivo - a beautiful widow with a shadowy past - puts a high price on her affections.

In Barcelona, Trini Milmany struggles to raise Lluis' son on her own, letters from the front her only solace. With bombs falling as fast as the city's morale, she leaves to winter with Lluis' brigade on a quiet section of the line.

But even on 'dead' fronts the guns do not stay silent for long. Trini's decision will put her family's fate in the hands of Juli Soleras, old friend and traitor of easy conscience, a philosopher-cynic locked in an eternal struggle with himself.

Joan Sales, a combatant in the civil war, distilled his experiences into a timeless story of thwarted love, lost youth and crushed illusions. A thrilling epic that has drawn comparison with the work of Dostoevsky and Stendhal, Uncertain Glory is a homegrown counterpart to classics such as Homage to Catalonia and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

“Magnificent . . . Peter Bush and MacLehose Press have done a great service in reviving this Catalan classic - GuardianWonderfully readable . . . Uncertain Glory is a major novel that expresses the disillusion of a generation who fought a just war against fascism, but lost their idealism and youth - Literary ReviewA masterwork that will seduce anew with its passion, humour, pathos and the all too-human spats of anger - Irish TimesIn this bravura novel of the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, Catalan author Joan Sales evokes its messy, devastating lived reality, but even more memorably the intense feeling of being alive which war paradoxically produces... at the novel's core is a group of young 'voices', brilliantly rendered, as they rage to live”

Magnificent . . . Peter Bush and MacLehose Press have done a great service in reviving this Catalan classic - Guardian

Wonderfully readable . . . Uncertain Glory is a major novel that expresses the disillusion of a generation who fought a just war against fascism, but lost their idealism and youth - Literary Review

A masterwork that will seduce anew with its passion, humour, pathos and the all too-human spats of anger - Irish Times

In this bravura novel of the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, Catalan author Joan Sales evokes its messy, devastating lived reality, but even more memorably the intense feeling of being alive which war paradoxically produces... at the novel's core is a group of young 'voices', brilliantly rendered, as they rage to live

Joan Sales (1912-1983) was a Catalan writer, translator and publisher. He obtained a Law degree in 1932 and was a member of regional anarchist and communist groups. In the Civil War he fought on the Madrid and Aragonese fronts before going into exile in France in 1939. He moved to Mexico in 1942, returning to Catalonia in 1948, after which he began working as a publisher. Uncertain Glory, his crucial testament, was first published in 1956, though a combination of censorship and Sales' tendency towards revision meant that a definitive edition was not available until many years later.

SPAIN, 1937. Posted to the Aragonese front, Lieutenant Lluis Ruscalleda eschews the drunken antics of his comrades and goes in search of intrigue. But the lady of Castel de Olivo - a beautiful widow with a shadowy past - puts a high price on her affections. In Barcelona, Trini Milmany struggles to raise Lluis' son on her own, letters from the front her only solace. With bombs falling as fast as the city's morale, she leaves to winter with Lluis' brigade on a quiet section of the line. But even on 'dead' fronts the guns do not stay silent for long. Trini's decision will put her family's fate in the hands of Juli Soleras, old friend and traitor of easy conscience, a philosopher-cynic locked in an eternal struggle with himself. Joan Sales, a combatant in the civil war, distilled his experiences into a timeless story of thwarted love, lost youth and crushed illusions. A thrilling epic that has drawn comparison with the work of Dostoevsky and Stendhal, Uncertain Glory is a homegrown counterpart to classics such as Homage to Catalonia and For Whom the Bell Tolls .

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