The Forging of a Rebel: The Forge, the Track and the Clash

This astonishing autobiographical trilogy—hailed by George Orwell and Gabriel García Márquez—is “the most definitive and personal account of Spain’s history during . . . the 20th century” (Guardian).

The Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history and society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events of the Spanish Civil War.

Arturo Barea’s masterpiece charts the author's coming-of-age in a bruised and starkly unequal Spain. These three volumes recount in lively detail Barea's daily experience of his country as it pitched toward disaster: we are taken from his youthful play and rebellion on the streets of Madrid, to his apprenticeship in the business world and to the horrors he witnessed as part of the Spanish army in Morocco during the Rif War. The trilogy culminates in an indelible portrait of the Republican fight against Fascist forces in which the Madrid of Barea's childhood becomes a shell and bullet-strewn warzone.

Combining historical sweep and authority with poignant characterization and novelistic detail, The Forging of a Rebel is a towering literary and historical achievement.

Arturo Barea (1897-1957) was born in Badajoz and raised and educated in Madrid. For most of the Spanish Civil War, he acted as head of the Foreign Press and Censorship Bureau of the Republican Government in Madrid and was also the radio broadcaster who spoke as the 'Unknown Voice of Madrid'. Eventually forced out of Spain, he sought temporary asylum in France before crossing to England just before the outbreak of World War II. He and his wife Ilsa settled in Eaton Hastings near Faringdon in Berkshire. From 1940 until 1957 he transmitted a weekly broadcast for Spanish Radio to South America. He published novels and short stories as well as books of criticism, and his great autobiographical trilogy The Forging of a Rebel first appeared in English between 1941 and 1946.

Translator Ilsa Barea (1902-1973) was born and raised in Vienna, where she studied politics at Vienna University. In the 1930s she emigrated to Czechoslovakia for political reasons, before travelling to Spain in support of the Republican side early in the Civil War. She translated more than twenty books into English and lectured and broadcast in several languages. She died in Vienna while working on her autobiography.