'That Summer’s Deceased': Everything Was True

Abstract

The author, a peer writer, explains how reading Os mortos daquel verán strongly influenced his decision to devote himself to literature. He was struck by its shape, its structure, and Casares’ choosing to tell that particular story in a multifaceted way, starting with ten witnesses giving incoherent, biased and contradictory statements regarding the death of the apothecary. For these reasons, he singles it out as the literary high point in the works of Carlos Casares. Furthermore, he argues that, once finished, Os mortos daquel verán ferments in the conscience of the reader, causing the truth Casares was striving to expose, though without ever mentioning it explicitly, to burst forth: his condemnation of the fascist acts of brutality from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Thus, Casares anticipates the later boom of historic memory novels.