The 3 best books by José Luis Corral

When a historian decides to write a historical novel, the arguments shoot up to infinity. It is the case of Jose Luis Corral, Aragonese author who dedicates himself profusely to the genre of historical fiction, alternating it with publications of a purely informative nature as a good scholar of his area. Around 20 novels are already treasured by this writer specialized in the medieval but capable of lavish himself in any other scenario of universal history.

The greatest virtue of José Luis Corral is his ability to novelize history when he has to and to represent fictions or intra-stories inserted in a scrupulously real context. The passion for what one does, the taste for what one is trained in can lead to that literary art halfway between pedagogy and entertainment, probably the ideal synthesis of what any self-respecting historical novel should be.

Rigorous then but also detached and unleashed in its plots. Writer capable of presenting history as an exciting tale of characters, circumstances, decisions, revolutions, advances and involutions, beliefs and science. History is the unstable balance of the human being's passage through this world. How not to get passionate when it comes to raising a plot of this genre.

José Luis Corral offers in each new novel the commitment of the historian, that kind of scrupulous due practice, made compatible with all of this with a teaching intention that comes more in the living rhythm in which it arises.

3 recommended novels by José Luis Corral

kill the king

The project of that Spain of the fourteenth century between kingdoms, counties, conquests and reconquests configures an Iberian peninsula of political instability (or rather royal or stately instability because of politics those days little). José Luis Corral brings us closer to a remote time but where everything begins to take shape as we know this terroir between Spain and Portugal. That yes, in that point to the Modern Age, from a low middle age still with solid structural foundations, there was still a lot of fabric to cut. As a sample serve this novel with continuity notice...

1312. Rivers of blood run through the kingdom of Castilla y León after the death of Fernando IV, when his son and heir, Alfonso XI, is barely a year old. While nobles and members of the court fight a terrible fight to seize the throne, only María de Molina and Constanza de Portugal, Alfonso's grandmother and mother, will protect him and hatch a complex web of intrigues and alliances to keep the crown that everyone covets. .

This novel begins a biology in which the renowned medievalist and writer José Luis Corral addresses the reigns of Alfonso XI the Justiciero, and that of his son Pedro I of Castile the Cruel. Forbidden loves, poisoned pacts, thirst for justice and ruthless men give life to this fascinating narrative.

The golden room

The emergence of the novelist professor occurred with this great novel in which its protagonist, a boy named Juan, guides us on a fascinating journey through Europe in the Middle Ages. Juan's experiences are interspersed with the reality of a Europe dotted with diverse cultures full of riches but committed to conflict as the only form of relationship.

The author's knowledge of the great and the most unknown symbols of some ethnic groups and others serve to enrich a plot in which Juan advances, managing to escape his fatal destiny as a slave. From the Ukraine to Istanbul, Genoa or Zaragoza, a wonderful journey to decipher yesterday's enigmas that survive as echoes of today.

The golden room

The heretic doctor

Science and religion. The proposals towards the more realistic knowledge and the beliefs of the shadows, the punishment and the resignation. Certain epochs of humanity experienced a conflict between heaven, science and hell, a difficult mixture capable of dragging heretics into redemptive fires.

The Protestant Reformation threatened the future of Christianity. The last thing the believers on both sides wanted was for science and its advances to get more faithful drags. But those who discovered so much light in science felt that they needed to expose the ultimate truth, at any cost. Miguel Servetus was a stubborn scientist. His execution only silenced his echo, but never his voice.

The heretic doctor

Other recommended books by José Luis Corral…

The Austrias. Time in your hands

This novel by José Luis Corral introduced herself as a continuation of his acclaimed Flight of the Eagles. And contrary to what usually happens, I liked this second part even more than the first.

Charles I was crowned to administer the Empire that at that time set the pace for a world in which European sailors still dreamed of new places to colonize. Europe was the center of power and the rest of the continents were being drawn at the whim of the cartographers of the old continent.

In that world, the great Hispanic monarch faced all kinds of setbacks already known through the written legacy of History. But José Luis Corral, an impeccable connoisseur of all those historical vicissitudes, somehow humanizes the figure of the king.

Beyond the titles and formalities, the dates, the official documents and the evocative quotes, Carlos I of Spain and V of Germany (as we were always told at school) was also the son of the indomitable (more than crazy ) Juana and ended up marrying her cousin Isabel de Portugal.

I say all this because History also leaves a trace of the most personal, of the king's feelings, of his way of acting and developing. Knowing Carlos I beyond his strictly historical milestones should be a pleasant task for a historian, and surely José Luis Corral will have known how to capture that "way of being" that slides among all kinds of testimonies of the time, to better outline whether It fits the events and circumstances of the 40-year reign in which he resolved conflicts or led them to war.

Ultimately, The Austrias. Time in your hands, is a novel turned into an exhaustive account of the early years of the emperor, by the hand of this great teacher and connoisseur of history and its stories ...

The Austrias. Time in your hands

blood crown

Blood Crown is the second installment in the bilogy that began with Kill the King. Both novels narrate the events that occurred in the fourteenth century, the cruelest and most violent in the history of Spain, and culminating in its last -and most controversial- king: Pedro I of Castile.

When Alfonso XI, King of Castile and León, dies from the black plague during the siege of Gibraltar, the kingdom is orphaned, with threatened borders and devastated crops. It will be then that his son Pedro, a fifteen-year-old with a great thirst for power, who has lived apart and marginalized from the court, will be crowned king.

Pushed by the desire for revenge of his mother, María de Portugal, and threatened by the vile look of his bastard brother, Enrique de Trastámara, Pedro I will cause a wave of violence, hatred and massacres that would determine the destiny of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, Portugal and Granada and the Crown of Aragon. His reign would continue the betrayals, alliances and wars, unleashed by envy, forbidden love, sex and hidden interests that crossed the palace walls and forever marked this time as one of the bloodiest in our history.

blood crown
5/5 - (13 votes)

2 comments on "The 3 best books by José Luis Corral"

  1. This author is splendid. Capable of immersing you to the depths in the stories and ups and downs of the time and characters that he recreates. I am passionate about history novels and now I am finishing El Conquistador. Highly recommended, like Los Austrias, the number of God and many other novels I've read. My next read: Kill the King.
    Highly recommended author. Neither time nor money is lost with the pleasant and well-documented reading of it. Let's see if he dares to write about Eleanor of Aquitaine, I can't find books about this attractive character

    Reply
    • Read Aquitaine. It tells the early years of Eleanor of Aquitaine and she won a planet award. I think the author's name is Eva García Sáenz de Urturi. This novel is exciting

      Reply

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