Las barbas del profeta

Like many children of the Spanish postwar period, Eduardo Mendoza studied a subject called Sacred History at school, a summary and illustration of some passages from the Bible that gave rise to a fascination for the written word and for fictional worlds, in addition to teaching him to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. "I am not exaggerating when I affirm that the Sacred History that I studied in school was the first source of true literature to which I was exposed," recalls Eduardo Mendoza in the introduction to this revised edition of Las barbas del propeta. From the combination of two themes, the children's delight in the Bible, considered strictly as a literary work, and the reflection on the influence of fiction in the formation of an early vocation writer, this book was born. Based on his childhood memories and on the certainty that a society is better explained if it does not disassociate itself from its founding myths, Eduardo Mendoza undertakes a formidable journey through the land of José and his brothers, Solomon, the Tower of Babel and of Jonah, and thus pays his debt, or part of it, to the boy he was then to continue being the writer he is now.