Review: The Fugitive Voices by Alfons Cervera

Review of the book “The Fugitive Voices” by Alfons Cervera.

«Las voces fugitivas» is a work by the Spanish writer Alfons Cervera, published in 2020. It is a novel that portrays the life of a family through different generations, from the 1940s to the present, and explores themes such as love, loss, memory and identity.

Alfons Cervera’s Las voces fugitivas is a novel that immerses us in the traumatic past of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s repression, through the memory of a narrator who seeks to reconstruct the history of his family and his country. The author, who has dedicated a large part of his work to exploring the traces of political and social violence in Spanish society, offers us a polyphonic, fragmentary and emotional narrative that combines personal testimony with historical account, lyricism with realism, fiction with documentation.

The novel is structured in four parts, each of them focused on a character who represents a fugitive voice, a voice silenced or marginalized by the dominant power.

The first part is entitled “The Father’s Voice” and tells the story of Vicente Cervera, the narrator’s father, who was a communist militant who participated in the anti-Franco resistance and who suffered prison, torture and exile.

The second part is called “The Mother’s Voice” and tells the story of María Teresa Martínez, the narrator’s mother, who was also a political activist who had to face the repression and machismo of the time.

The third part is called “The Brother’s Voice” and tells the story of José Luis Cervera, the narrator’s older brother, who was a poet committed to social causes and who died young, a victim of mental illness.

The fourth and final part is called “The Voice of the Son” and corresponds to the narrator himself, who tries to make sense of his identity and his place in the world through the fugitive voices of his family.

The Fugitive Voices is a novel that speaks to us of pain and love, of memory and oblivion, of resistance and hope. It is a novel that invites us to listen to the voices that power has tried to silence, the voices that tell us another story, the story of the defeated, the persecuted, the forgotten. It is a novel that reminds us that the fugitive voices are not only those of the past, but also those of the present, those of those who continue to fight for a more just and more humane world.

The plot begins with the main character, the grandfather, who lives in a house in the countryside with his wife and children. As the story progresses, the children grow up and begin to have their own lives and problems, while the grandfather faces his own mortality and the pain of losing his wife. The narrative weaves between the past and the present, through the voices of the different members of the family and other characters who are part of their story.

The novel is written in simple and evocative prose, inviting the reader to immerse themselves in the family’s life and reflect on universal themes. Cervera has a remarkable ability to describe landscapes and moments, and manages to create an emotionally dense and profound atmosphere.

The play also addresses important social issues, such as the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s repression and tensions between the city and the countryside. These historical themes are intertwined with the family’s daily life, which gives the narrative a broader dimension.

In short, “Las voces fugitivas” is a powerful novel that captivates the reader with its evocative prose and its look at the life of a family over time. Cervera’s work invites us to reflect on universal themes and to question the way in which we understand our own identity and the meaning of our existence.