The 3 best books by Torcuato Luca de Tena

With his bombastic name, Torcuato Luca from Tena seems to evoke a writer from other times, some contemporary of the same Miguel de Cervantes or even of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (don't tell me it doesn't sound as sophisticated and romantic). Although of course, it also has to do with the fact that the writer inherits the surnames and names of the first Marquis of Luca de Tena, hence surely the not so free association.

But in the end Luca de Tena naturally connects more with someone practically contemporary like Camilo José Cela and that Spanish literature of the twentieth century already in full force with the days that we have had to live. Because certainly the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the one hand and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries on the other can be even in cultural analogies (perhaps it is a question that here this blogger has already traveled in both centuries ...)

As an academicist of the language that he came to be, Luca de Tena practiced that fine literature, careful in form and pretentious in the background, a narrative with interest of chronicler transcendence without forgetting that creative aspect of the good plots that if they do not end up transmitting tension around the future of the characters, could remain in the wisps of the era.

From practicing journalism in which he ended up moving through all its ranks, Luca de Tena made compatible that vocation as a writer that led to an extensive and brilliant bibliography that summarizes volumes of great cultural substance to plots of popular genres.

Top 3 recommended novels by Torcuato Luca de Tena

God's crooked lines

One of those stories that you discover by chance and that ends up fascinating you. In principle due to the very concept of the plot that seems to take precedence in time and form to much more explored arguments today. Hence the success of its recent film version on Netflix.

All thanks to the fact that this great novel acquires that pioneering point, at least in our country, of a subgenre of suspense that borders on psychological thriller and black novel. Except that, as a great advantage for a novel of this type, its foray into areas not yet explored at the time allowed a creative freedom that still gives it freshness and innovation today.

Alice Gould is admitted to a mental hospital. In her delirium, she believes she is a private investigator in charge of a team of detectives dedicated to clearing up complicated cases. According to a letter from her private doctor, the reality is different: her paranoid obsession is to attempt on her husband's life. The extreme intelligence of this woman and her apparently normal attitude will confuse doctors to the point of not knowing for sure if Alice has been unjustly admitted or in fact suffers from a serious and dangerous psychological disorder.

God's crooked lines

Age prohibited

I do not know to what extent the notions of good and evil will now have sexual aspects. Taboos have long since fallen down like a wall of the most hypocritical morality.

Perhaps there are still obstacles depending on which families or environments, old concepts of flowers necessarily unfading in the heat of early youth. Guilt, fear and religious projections of duty and punishment. The point is that the wall was not so long ago. Not so many years have passed since dawn could not be seen as the darkness of the wall loomed over all consciousness.

During one of his walks on the beach, Anastasio, a shy and withdrawn teenager, befriends Enrique, a cheerful boy with a strong personality, who leads a gang of crazy young men. With their backs to the civil war that ravages Spain, both are growing while discovering the world: Anastasio, insecure and passionate, will receive the arrival of sexuality with fear and suspicion; Enrique will mature by leaps and bounds, with the impulse of someone who wants to know the secrets of life above all else. One of the most ambitious works by Torcuato Luca de Tena.

Age prohibited

Ambassador in hell

It is curious how the victims can become less so according to their condition, origin, sex, belief or any other aberrant notion that can differentiate them. The same people who complain about an always atrocious murder, can come to assume a homicide as inherent to the events, without further ado ... All this to delve into the history of some protagonists who become very real. Yes, from the famous Blue Division sent by Franco to help the Nazis in Russia.

At the time there were those who complained of the bias, of the "conservative" of the author. And so they could continue to carry the image of a military body such as the Blue Division without personalizing possible victims, without assuming hardships suffered by those soldiers ... Historical novel that recounts the epic of Captain Teodoro Palacios, at the head of the blue division in the Soviet front in WWII.

In 1943, together with his soldiers, he was captured by Soviet troops, and for 11 years he was held in various Russian concentration camps, where he suffered all kinds of punishments and humiliations. During all those years in prison he is an example of encouragement, pride and solidarity for all the prisoners held with him, until in 1954, after the death of Stalin, he was repatriated.

Ambassador in hell
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