The 3 best books of Santiago Posteguillo

Probably the most original Spanish writer of historical novels is Santiago Posteguillo. In his books we find pure historical narrative but we can also enjoy a proposal that goes beyond historical facts to delve into the history of thought or art or literature.

The originality lies in its ability to apply rigor to a literature that also attracts readers seeking a balance between knowledge and entertainment, achieved largely through a fluid, dynamic language. Hence, it has become a bestseller capable of convincing more purist critics and readers more interested in entertainment novels. Undoubtedly, a great virtue of synthesis only possible in a wise writer, with communication skills and great creativity.

I make a parenthesis to indicate that one of his most acclaimed works, the Africanus trilogy, can be found here:

It also often happens that every writer and exhaustive connoisseur of a subject ends up succumbing to serial writing or sagas. His trilogies on the Roman world were received with great esteem in all literary fields.

And all this in just 10 years of dedication to literature. A time in which this author has lavished on historical fictions very diverse, posing great enigmas or narrating absolutely fascinating historical aspects. Just as many of his readers value his historical sagas more, my selection of his best works take other paths, historical novels with a special aftertaste, that of the differential nuance discovered by a writer capable of unveiling prodigies ...

Top 3 best novels by Santiago Posteguillo

Rome is me

The Roman Empire has no secrets for Posteguillo. No one better than him to revisit the greatest myths in order to shed more light. Clarifying facts but also reaching levels of empathy and mimicry (until Posteguillo impossible), with great men and women of that old world that precedes us. Ave Santiago and everyone to the mess of rediscovering the greatest emperor in history.

Rome, 77 BC The cruel senator Dolabela is going to be tried for corruption, but he has hired the best lawyers, he has bought the jury and, in addition, he is known for using violence against all those who confront him. Nobody dares to be the prosecutor, until suddenly, against all odds, a young patrician of only twenty-three years agrees to lead the prosecution, defend the people of Rome and challenge the power of the elites. The unknown lawyer's name is Gaius Julius Caesar.

Masterfully combining an exhaustive historical rigor and an extraordinary narrative capacity, Santiago Posteguillo manages to immerse the reader in the heat of the battles, make him walk through the most dangerous streets while the senators' henchmen lurk around any corner, live the great love story of Julius Caesar with Cornelia, his first wife, and ultimately understand how the origins of man were behind the myth.

I am Rome, by Santiago Posteguillo

And Julia challenged the gods

In the historical, Julia Domna lived her glorious time as Roman Empress for eighteen years. In the literary it is Santiago Posteguillo who has recovered it to green those laurels (never better brought the laurel as a Roman symbol of victory par excellence), and incidentally make feminine a vindication from the very origins of our western culture.

First of all, the Planet award 2018 it would necessarily be an important accolade for Posteguillo to delve even further into its great protagonist in this already double saga with aspirations of an essential historical volume for lovers of the ancient world.

The glory of Julia, forged with that relentless struggle of the woman at the controls of an entire empire, came with the wise and also reckless conviction that only by letting herself be seen on dangerous fronts could she win the admiration of all. And so it happened.

But when the time comes to assert herself in power as something more than the consort, the shadow of the disease hangs over her with the evocation so close to our days of cancer.

However, the worst thing for Julia is to find her sons Caracalla and Geta irreconcilably confronted by a power that is not even hers yet. What makes her draw strength from weakness to try to stop a fratricidal struggle that can throw all her effort and dedication to the ground.

With breast cancer inevitably spreading through her body, Julia feels at times the bitterest defeat for her own life and for the future behind her. But ..., fate or chance of gods, only a new impulse as intense as that of love can recover her for the most spirited of her battles.

Love as a lever with which to relaunch her last great attempt to give new horizons to the empire, before the twilight of her days takes her wherever she can reach; surpassing the providence of gods with whom she does not seem willing to negotiate her last beats of life.
And Julia challenged the gods

The seventh circle of hell

I intersperse this different work among a bibliography of Julia made already memorable saga. But it is not a whim but rather to enjoy a very interesting work.

That artistic creation in general and literary creation in particular has largely been fed by tormented souls is unquestionable. I do not believe that there is any creator who has not searched in the deepest recesses of perdition, hopelessness, melancholy, forgetfulness or sadness to sublimate the great works of universal literature.

Beyond the generational labels, the pretended or pretentious thematic grouping, the official recognition, the tendentious historical tendencies (worth braying), and everything that the habitual grouping tendency of human reason establishes, creation has a score. common, a creative musicality. The most beautiful creation cannot exist without the counterweight of a creative soul that has visited hell.

In this book that presents us with so many writers in history punished by their circumstances, Santiago Posteguillo resorts to Dante's hell as a paradigm of literary creation. Dante as universal emblematic author with his Divine Comedy. And the success in the reference is maximum.

The labyrinthine hell gives a lot of itself to welcome perpetual visitors or occasional tourists, we are all susceptible to taking a walk around that place where the underworld opens its cracks. Hell thousands persecuted great authors in history, as the official synopsis of the book itself announces, from the KGB to Nazism, from any war to any personal loss, from censorship to the stateless feeling of the exile. Hell is a state, provoked or self-induced.

But when literature becomes a kind of cure, a placebo, a space for the expiation of guilt or a meeting place with other souls, hell is partly justified and the punishment slightly relieved.

A fantastic review of world literature without labels or official considerations, an approach to several authors who felt and wrote, who dumped their hells and demons on paper, with more or less hope, with more or less intention of making immortal the perishable of the soul

The seventh circle of hell

Other recommended novels by Santiago Posteguillo…

I, Julia

A novel that recovers once again the brilliance historically denied to the feminine and as true as it has been demonstrated in the light of the evidence.

Between battles for an imperial power of millenary Rome, Julia's intelligence serves to lead a period of history that could end up being critical for the governance of the known world but that in its manifest instability served for her, Julia, to form as a Goddess the designs of the Empire.

And it was that, the final destination that she had already been hatching, the same one that ended up raising him as the first most powerful empress, head of a dynasty consolidated thanks to her underground maneuvers and her magnificent strategic gifts on the edge of catastrophe.

The admired empress came to capitalize on the essence of the state, appeared minted in coins and knew how to be the first great woman to rule a world with that double effort that every woman needs to carry out any business.

I, Julia

damn rome

A daunting task that only Santiago Posteguillo could undertake. Because when it seems that everything has been said about a great historical figure like Julius Caesar, it may be the perfect time to review everything. Not so much to open up to new scenarios but to get closer, in tune and empathy with the character.

After the enormous success of Rome is me, the best-selling novel in Spain in 2022, Santiago Posteguillo resumes his great literary project, narrating the life of Julius Caesar, in the highly anticipated second installment of his saga dedicated to the great character of classical Rome.

damn rome

The blood of the books

The magic of the books that tell what happened in each historical moment. The charm of pages filled with ink and blood.

Books are the quintessential testimonies of our civilization from the moment that writing became the fundamental path of our history. Fundamental books and their coincidences to reach our days. Books that did not tell everything and others that told too much.

All that writer or scribe of other times acquired the capital responsibility of telling us what happened to our ancestors, our world after all.

Posteguillo leads us through History through so many books that speak of very special lives, momentous decisions and some mysteries that have come down to us today as written in a bottle ...

The blood of the books

The night Frankstein read Don Quixote

Under this suggestive title we find some stories that link with the magic of historical opportunity, or rather of chance that links the mechanism of History through literature.

A kind of parallel chronicles offer alternative glimpses of very relevant events in history, from the real authenticity of what Shakespeare wrote to the books that mocked the imprimatur of the church and that therefore could open minds stubborn with the dark reality presented by the church.

The night Frankenstein read Don Quixote
5/5 - (16 votes)

2 comments on "The 3 best books by Santiago Posteguillo"

  1. Vorrei sapere dove posso acquistare «L'ultima Victory» di Posteguillo in the BOOK format. I don't risk finding it from a publishing house, not sold in books, not on its Ebay. Non so più dove cercare. Giuliana

    Reply

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