Nothing Less Than a Man (Translated) #1010778

This edition includes:
• New English translation
• Critical introduction

Some men would rather be feared, admired, obeyed — anything but loved. Miguel de Unamuno hands that attitude to a self-made millionaire as a boast, then lets it echo through an entire town until it becomes the most damning thing anyone can say about him.

Renada is a provincial city where nothing stays private, and its most talked-about sight is not the cathedral but Julia Yáñez, a celebrated beauty whom her ruined father is quietly trying to convert into a good marriage. Into her life comes Alejandro Gómez, the indiano — a man who left for Cuba and Mexico with nothing, came back with a fortune, an estate and no past anyone can verify, and who settles her father's debts the way another man might buy a horse. He marries her, surrounds her with luxury, refuses her nothing except the one thing she keeps asking for: the certainty of being loved. What follows is a marriage between two people speaking different languages — his the language of property and will, hers the language of a question she cannot stop repeating.

Unamuno is one of the great unquiet minds of modern European fiction, and this short, savage novella is his method at its purest: passion compressed into dialogue, drawing rooms and a single unanswered question that grows heavier with every page.

This edition is a literary translation made for readers of today's English — natural and alive in its dialogue, faithful to Unamuno's substance, his voice, his tone and his images, so that the tension and the beauty come through undimmed.

The volume opens with a critical introduction placed before the author's text, an illuminating way into the world of the story that makes the first page land harder.

Add it to your library, and let this one keep you reading late.