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Between 1940 and 1965, Spain was almost entirely cut off from the intellectual life of western Europe. Within Spain itself, opposition writers believed that a committed literature could take over the role of the press in a democratic society, dealing with daily realities and social issues as well as with political questions. This was the background to the emergence in the 1950s of the novela social, Spain's post-war realist novel.

First published in 1990, Writing and Politics in Franco's Spain explores the early development of this literary movement and reveals the beginnings of the novela social as a complex, dynamic, gradually unfolding process. Making use of new research, the author charts the ways in which authors involved in the novela social formed groups around certain literary and cultural reviews of the period. He traces the influences which provided the early social novelists with theoretical and practical guidance for their writing, pointing especially to Sartre, Italian neo-realism, and the novels of North American writers like Hemingway and Dos Passos.

A major reassessment of an important literary movement, Writing and Politics in Franco's Spain is deeply concerned with relations between texts, contexts, and wider social and cultural processes. It will be of special value to students of contemporary Spanish literature and history.