Canción bajo el agua

In May 1939, the officer Eladio Ferlosio returned to his small town lost in the mining mountains with the vain illusion that the war that had just ended has respected his family, his countrymen and Eleonora Cardenal, the daughter of a doctor who came to town. fleeing the Spanish flu, which he has loved since he was little more than a child. Mandatory conscription had forced him out of his land when the last thing he could do was become a soldier. In February 1935 Teodoro Sacristán also returned to his town after leaving the seminary. He does not want to be a priest, but a painter, in order to reflect the intense colors of life. But, like Eladio, he will end up being a soldier, like so many others who never wanted to be such. The lives lived -and not lived- of Eladio and Teodoro masterfully intertwine in this novel full of that magical realism that builds unforgettable characters, such as a shepherd of a single sheep, an insidious ghost, a cowardly engineer, a disabled loved one, a blessed and her thirty-seven saints or a lustful lovebird; that stops at color and joy with the same mastery as pain and death to point out, once again, the folly of war.