The Man of War by Ramiro Pinilla

The man of war
by Ramiro Pinilla

On the author’s centenary, an unpublished novel that gives the measure of Ramiro Pinilla’s narrative mastery.

Urko Pínaga returns from exile to attend the funeral of his aunt Flora, with whom he lived before leaving for England, like so many Basque children. Urko finds a Getxo different from the one he knew, but above all with a house, his aunt’s, which now appears to him as a mysterious place suddenly loaded with secrets. Why do you have a demolition notice from the authorities? Why is his cousin Regina behaving so strangely? Did Flora secretly maintain a relationship that she did not confess to her nephew? Has she died a natural death? The contrast between what Flora told him in a letter and what Urko encounters fuels suspicions about a woman whom the protagonist may actually have been completely unaware of.

Ramiro Pinilla (Bilbao, 1923-Baracaldo, 2014) had a dazzling appearance in the sixties with The Blind Ants (Nadal Prize and Critics’ Prize) and with Seno (finalist for the 1971 Planeta Prize). After that successful start, he decided to publish in small publishing houses for more than thirty years. And it was not until the appearance of the exceptional Green valleys, red hills (Tusquets Editores, 2004 and 2005), a trilogy composed of The convulsive land, The naked bodies and The iron ashes (Euskadi Prize, National Critics Prize and Prize National Narrative), that Pinilla was able to return to his rightful place in Spanish letters. Later he published, also in Tusquets, La higuera, Antonio B. el Ruso, third class citizen, That unforgettable age (Euskadi Prize) and The stories. And in 2009 he started an original police series composed of Just One More Dead, The Empty Cemetery and Corpses on the Beach. Now, on the centenary of his birth, The Man of War is a gift in the form of an unpublished novel that Pinilla left ready for publication.