A stranger in my own land; Sofia Casanova, a Spanish writer in the European fin de siecle.

9780826516145

A stranger in my own land; Sofia Casanova, a Spanish writer in the European fin de siecle.

Hooper, Kirsty.

Vanderbilt University Press

2008

235 pages

$34.95

Paperback

PQ6605

Hooper (Spanish and Galician, University of Liverpool) has a twofold purpose in writing this book. The first is to rescue from near oblivion the Galician/Spanish writer, Sofia Casanova. The second is to assert and prove that Casanova was not unique, either in her talent and success or in being discarded from Spanish literary history. Hooper examines each of Casanova's novels and also discusses her many articles as the Eastern European correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC. She makes an excellent case for a reexamination of Casanova, both as a novelist and a journalist. Her eye-witness accounts of the taking of Warsaw in World War I and of the Russian Revolution in St. Petersburg are still valuable for historical information as well as literary content. But it is in the explication of the insidious manner in which Casanova was distorted and then forgotten by reviewers and panegyrists that this book shines. The combination of anti-feminism in Spain and the "Spain is different" mentality inside the country allowed her work and her life to become part of national legend and her own identity to be erased. This is a superb blending of literary biography and social commentary.

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