The 'Truth' of the Past: Fiction as an Alternative to History in Contemporary Spanish Narratives of the Civil War and the Holocaust

This article explores the debates regarding the use of fiction to represent traumatic twentieth-century experiences. Through an analysis of Jorge Semprun's Quel beau dimanche (1980) and Lecriture ou la vie (1994), Antonio Munoz Molina's Sefarad (2001) and Alberto Mendez's Los girasoles ciegos (2004), it interrogates the value and morality of contemporary Spanish novelists' use of fiction to explore the past. At the same time, this article seeks to build on a nascent field of critical investigation by drawing links between how novelists have written about two different historical experiences: the Spanish Civil War and the Holocaust.