A Woman Unknown: Voices from a Spanish Life

Description

Lucia Graves, daughter of the poet Robert Graves and his wife Beryl, grew up in the beautiful village of Deia on the island of Majorca. Neither Spanish nor Catholic by birth, she nevertheless absorbed the different traditions of Spain and felt the full impact of Franco's dictatorship through the experience of her education. Lucia found herself continually bridging the gaps between Catalan, Spanish and English, as she picked up the patterns and nuances that contain the essence of each culture. Portraying her life as a child watching the hills lit up by bonfires on Good Friday, or, years later, walking through the haunting backstreets of the Jewish quarter of Girona, this is a personal memoir which provides a first-hand account of Catalonia, where Lucia lived and raised a family. It is also a perceptive appraisal of a country burdened by tradition yet coming to terms with political change as the decades moved on.

Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves, the poet and novelist, and his wife Beryl. She was born in England and brought up in Deja, Mallorca. She has three daughters, and now lives in London

'Absorbing and quietly uncompromising, redolent with the vibrant smells and colours of Majorca, and of Spain' Daily Telegraph 'A highly revealing account, not only of a woman's life, but of a whole extraordinary passage in one contemporary European country...it should be read by everybody interested in Spain and in women's special history in the present century' Financial Times 'A personal, at times lucid and always colourful account of life - and a life - in post-war Spain' Sunday Times 'It is unfair to look for a poetic sensibility in the daughter of a poet, yet Lucia Graves has plenty of it. She is a fine writer' Literary Review.