Includes a Carpenter's Pencil.
It is the summer of 1936, in the early months of the agonising civil war that engulfed Spain and shook the world . . .
In a prison in the city of Santiago de Compostela, an artist sketches the famous porch of the cathedral that is known as the Portico de la Gloria. He uses a carpenter's pencil. But instead of reproducing the faces of the prophets and elders on the sculptured portal, he replaces them with the faces of his Republican prison inmates. A warden, the man who will one day kill him in an act of mercy, watches him in fascination . . .
This deeply poetic and moving novel conveys the full horror and savagery of the tragedy that afflicted Spain, as well as the memories of the men and women who survived it. Yet in the process, it also relates one of the most unforgettable love stories imaginable.
To Manuel Rivas, whose grandfather was a carpenter during the Spanish Civil War, the carpenter's pencil is a symbol of freedom of expression and the endurance of creativity in spite of the tyranny that has, throughout history, forced artists into silence. To acknowledge this every copy of this book is shrinkwrapped with a carpenter's pencil.
