A BOOK about the Civil War by one of Spain’s most prominent literary figures, Pedro Salinas, has been published posthumously.

Salinas (pictured), one of the poets who formed part of the now world-famous ‘Generation of 27’ – Spain’s answer to the Bloomsbury Group and so-named since they were in their heyday at around this date – wrote a novel titled El Valor de la Vida – which could translate as either The Value of Life, or The Courage of Life.

Since the novel has only just hit the shelves in Spain, an English translation is not yet available but it is likely that this will be the case in the future, since the microfilm containing the document had been stored in an archive of Salinas’ works in Harvard University in the USA.

The novel has not been published until now because Salinas never got around to finishing it before his death, but according to professor of Spanish literature at Madrid’s Complutense University, José Paulino Ayuso – who has written an introduction and critical study of the work – it reads as a complete story even without the original author having put the final touches on it.

It is the only novel Salinas ever wrote, although he since penned the novellas The incredible bomb and The impeccable naked man.

Paulino explains that El Valor de la Vida is not, technically, a novel about the Civil War, but is merely set in that period, and tells of a young female nurse who had worked in a Republican hospital and then sought refuge in the USA.

Ironically, Salinas did not experience the Civil War personally. When it broke out in 1936, he fled to the States via Bilbao.