Winter 2021: Nada, by Carmen Laforet

E. G.

One of the most important commemorations of 2021 in the panhispanic world is the centenary of the birth of the writer Carmen Laforet (Barcelona, 6th September 1921 - Madrid, 28 February 2004). With her first novel, Nada, Laforet was the winner of the first edition of the prestigious Nadal Prize in 1944, when she was only 24 years old, setting a youth record in being awarded this prize that has not yet been surpassed.

Synopsis of Nada: A few years after the terrible civil war had ended, at midnight on an October day, Andrea arrives by train in Barcelona to study literature at the University. She marches through the wide, empty streets of the city in an old horse-drawn carriage until she reaches the house on Aribau Street where her relatives live. The expectation she feels in those initial magical moments will suddenly be erased when the door to the apartment opens, and from that moment on everything will seem like a nightmare.

The objective of the Reading Club, apart from improving the reading comprehension and speaking in Spanish, is to introduce to the attendees to the life and work of Carmen Laforet, and discover her social and historical context and the concerns and motives that fed her literary production.

The tutor of the Reading Club, Álvaro González Montero, has a degree in Translation and Language studies (English, French and Arabic) from the University of Malaga and teaches Spanish at a secondary school in Leeds. He is working on a Master's research project at the University of Leeds. In it he analyzes the construction of identity, especially homosexuality, colonialism and disease, in the diaries of Jaime Gil de Biedma, under the supervision of leading academics Richard Cleminson and Duncan Wheeler. His research interests include the Spanish Generation of 1950, the theory of the diaries, colonialism and the development of identity in literature.

Winter 2021: Nada, by Carmen Laforet

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