The Hive

by Camilo José Cela, James Womack (Translator)

Overview

The Hive presents a panoramic view of the degredation and sufferings of the lower middle class in post-civil war Spain. Readers are introduced to over a hundred characters through a series of starkly rendered, interlocking vignettes. Filled with violence, hunger, and compassion, The Hive captures the buzzing ambitions and setbacks of Spanish society under the rule of Franco.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681376165
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	774,851
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Скачко Борис Глібович - лікар (закінчив Київський медичний інститут в 1987 р.) за спеціальністю "лікувальна справа". Працював в різних лікувальних установах (відкривав і працював у відділеннях фітотерапії клінічної лікарні №24 м.Києва, Центрального госпіталю МВС України, дитячої лікарні №6 м.Києва та ін.). 6 років викладав на кафедрі фітотерапії з курсом фармакогнозії Київського медичного інституту УАНМ. Є продовжувачем династії фітотерапевтів - фітотерапевт в 7-му поколінні.

Editorial Reviews

Cela's novel depicts the hardship borne by the lower-middle class following the Spanish Civil War. Told through a series of interlinked vignettes, the story involves nearly 100 characters. For its blunt portrayal of life under a dictatorship, this 1953 book was banned during the Franco regime. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"Over three winter days, as Hitler’s forces falter on distant battlefields, Cela jump-cuts from scene to scene with cinematic brevity. Terse, urgent, agile, the narrative skips from life to life, mind to mind, with all the breakneck hurry of the urban crowd….For all its sadness, Cela’s laconic, swift-moving prose pushes forward with exhilarating energy." —Boyd Tonkin, The Wall Street Journal

"The Hive remains an inevitable monument in Spanish literature, an updated [Goya's] Disasters of War, whose vignettes revolve around the endurance of the Spanish character through the ravages of poverty and despotism.” —Adrian Nathan West, The New York Times Book Review

"Three hundred characters in 260 pages. How do you possibly keep track of so many names, so much intrigue?….But the blurring of identity is in line with Cela’s reduction of human beings to a few basic needs….In this limbo between realism and absurdism the characters struggle for survival….It was more or less inevitable that such a negative vision of life in Madrid would be banned under Franco’s dictatorship." —Tim Parks, London Review of Books

"There is a secret slot for Cela at his best, as lone of the great prose stylists, plural, of Spain — a man dangerously like us." —Roberto Bolaño

"Cela is the Goya of Franco's Spain." —Paul West
 
“It is not to be wondered that the French censorship disapproves of Cela’s novels . . . his literary affiliations are of the most radical; they are with Camus and Sartre, with Moravia, with Zola and French naturalism.” —Saul Bellow

“His best work . . . a carnivalesque reconstruction of the Spanish tradition, a nightmarish, surrealistic depiction of human endeavor.” —Julio Ortega

From the Publisher