The Shadow of the Earth by Elvira Mínguez

The shadow of the earth
by Elvira Minguez

(February 1, 2023)
“It will be the children who will conspire against the silence of their parents to free the earth from its shadow”

The Shadow of the Earth is the story of two women, or rather, of one of them’s rise to power and the other’s loss of it.

We are in 1896, in Villaveza del Agua, a town in the province of Zamora where hunger and poverty are the life circumstances of its inhabitants, subjected to Garibalda, a widowed and sick woman who imposes her own rules on the entire community.

The Garibalda dictatorship, the control and exploitation to which the men and women of the town are subjected, and the reverential fear they feel towards her has led the inhabitants of Villaveza to seek a solution, and this solution (or so they believe) is Atilana, a woman as tough as her circumstances who aspires to achieve the power held by the chieftain.

Having been at odds for many years, hatred keeps them going. The fight between these two selfish and manipulative women will drag down everyone who is by their side. Atilana and Garibalda, so absorbed in each other, unable to see beyond their confrontation, will not be aware of what is brewing around them until it is too late.

No one in the town will emerge unscathed from this bitterness, although their children, the main victims of these ruthless women, will be condemned to bear the cursed legacy of these acts.

In this story, actress Elvira Mínguez reveals herself as a narrator with extraordinary energy, capable of metabolizing all her dramatic talent and a deep knowledge of our literature into tragic and unforgettable characters. Reading this terrible novel, yet pierced by mercy, which belongs to the author but concerns us all, has the cathartic, transformative power reserved only for great stories.

Elvira Minguez She is one of the most renowned film actresses on the current audiovisual scene. She has worked under the orders of John Malkovich, Steven Soderbergh and Asghar Farhadi, among others. Among her most recent and successful works, her role as Flora in the adaptation of The Baztán Trilogy, by Dolores Redondo, stands out. A woman of great culture and intellectual concerns, The Shadow of the Earth is her first novel.