Soldiers Of Salamis - Javier Cercas

After reading this book I searched internet for "Soldiers of Salamis" - what exactly it means, Wikipedia explains this "The book's title is a metaphorical allusion to the famous Battle of Salamis in which the Athenian fleet defeated the Persians. It is composed in a mixture of fact and fiction, which is something of a speciality of the author" . True . This book is mixture of both. I don't know anything about Spanish history so it was bit troublesome to understand some historical characters in this book.

All wars are full of stories that sound like fiction.

This is the story of a journalist who is obsessed with finding truth about the daring escape by Sanchez Mazas from the firing squad. He was particularly intrigued by a Republican soldier who let Mazas go. The book is divided into three parts. In first part , journalist  Javier Cercas was intrigued by the story of Mazas and started making contacts to people associated with Mazas and the incident. He gather enough information except nothing about the solider who let go Mazas. The second part is a biography of Sanchez Mazas. And in the last part , the author meets another great writer Roberto Bolano who shares his experience of working in camp and ask Javier to call one -Miralles.

There're lots of decent people; they're the ones who know enough to say no in time; heroes, on the other hand, are few and far between. Actually, I think there's almost always something blind, irrational, instinctive in a hero's behaviour, something that's in their nature and inescapable.

Javier goes in search of Miralles and found him in a old age home. Miralles was a war veteran who fought the war with Republican. As all the circumstances and details leads to the same location and time as Mazas escape Javier suspects that Miralles was the soldier who let  Mazas go. But Miralles did not confirm it. For the author , he may or may not be that soldier but he completes the story of his book and brings back the memories all those unknown soldiers of the war. The conversation between Miralles and Javier at the nursing home were touching and emotional.

"Someone who considers himself a hero and gets it right. Or someone who has courage and an instinct of virtue, and therefore never makes a mistake, or at least doesn't make mistake the one time when it matters, and therefore can't not be a hero."

The crux of the story is "who is  hero?". The civil society treated Mazas as a hero where as countless soldiers like Miralles were left the world unknown.  Even today the society behaves the same way. The author very cleverly moves around right and wrong , fact and fiction  of the war. The author slowly realizes that the civil war is not the thing of past , it is present and it is alive through the survivors and its affects and influences everyone including his own.

This novel highlights the struggle of writing , being a writer and the creative process involved. The language , pace and insight in each paragraph make this novel one of the best. The author brings the human experience , memory  and various events during the war with sole aim of finding the truth. Whether he found the truth or not that's questionable but he brought back the memories of those  thousands of unknown soldiers to the front.

The book was written in Spanish and translated by Anne McLean.

A classic.