{"id":10463,"date":"2025-08-18T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/?post_type=faculty-books&p=10463"},"modified":"2025-08-18T12:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:00:15","slug":"the-op-ed-novel-a-literary-history-of-post-franco-spain","status":"publish","type":"faculty-books","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/faculty-books\/the-op-ed-novel-a-literary-history-of-post-franco-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Op-Ed Novel: A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new history of contemporary Spanish fiction through the prism of novelists\u2019 newspaper columns.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public intellectuals come in many different stripes, but most of them gain a following at least in part from their writing, whether in the form of magazine articles, newspaper columns, or full-length nonfiction. A few\u2014James Baldwin and Joan Didion are celebrated examples\u2014start out as novelists before turning to the rough-and-tumble of current affairs. In The Op-Ed Novel<\/em>, B\u00e9cquer Segu\u00edn undertakes the first book-length study of how contemporary literature is shaped by opinion journalism, focusing on fiction writers who took to the papers in post-Franco Spain and became stewards of their country\u2019s cultural, economic, and political future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Spain\u2019s transition to democracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, internationally acclaimed novelists such as Javier Cercas, Antonio Mu\u00f1oz Molina, and Javier Mar\u00edas seized the opportunity to populate the opinion pages of the newly legal free press. The Op-Ed Novel<\/em> analyzes how the argumentative styles and preoccupations of their columns in El Pa\u00eds<\/em>, Spain\u2019s most widely read daily, bled into their fiction. These and other authors used their novels to settle scores with fellow intellectuals, make speculative historical claims, and advance partisan political projects. At the same time, their literary technique greatly invigorated opinion journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lively guide to the terroir of contemporary Spanish literature, The Op-Ed Novel<\/em> offers a bird\u2019s-eye view of both the post-Franco intellectual climate and the changing role of the novelist in public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Praise<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An engaging, well-researched and sharply written account of the literary and journalistic landscapes during a period of societal transition\u2026It is also an original and meticulous study that compels us to rethink the presumptions and roles of journalism and literature, challenging the boundaries that separate them and questioning their established constructs and aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Etan Nechin, Times Literary Supplement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Op-Ed Novel<\/em>\u00a0not only elegantly recounts a vital intellectual and cultural history of post-Franco Spain. Carefully exploring the careers of Spain\u2019s most eminent writers, it demonstrates, too, the osmotic links between political journalism and literary fiction\u2014salutary reading in the English-speaking countries, where politics and literature are still regarded as strangers to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Pankaj Mishra, author of\u00a0Run and Hide<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In few places are novelists as powerful as in Spain, with the op-ed page serving as their pulpit and ring for political or cultural pugilism. In this hugely valuable study of the cross-fertilization between opinion writing and Spanish fiction, Segu\u00edn discovers a space where ideas are tested and novels are hatched. His book lets readers judge for themselves how much newspapers, novels, and public debate have been enriched as a result\u2014and how much the opposite has happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Giles Tremlett, author of\u00a0Espa\u00f1a: A Brief History of Spain<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most Anglophone literary critics have clicked on an op-ed whose byline they recognize from the cover of a favorite novel, but few have thought to examine, as B\u00e9cquer Segu\u00edn does in this bold study, cases where the writing of novels and op-eds overlap so much as to become a single enterprise. Tracing the growth of a culture in which novels mimic, grow out of, or usurp the functions of op-eds\u2014and vice-versa\u2014this book forces us to rethink our understanding of institutions and of genre, as well as received ideas about fictionality, the status of the intellectual, and the always slippery category of \u2018nonfiction.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Leah Price, author of\u00a0What We Talk About When We Talk About Books<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two types of intellectuals: the brave and everyone else. B\u00e9cquer Segu\u00edn analyzes why after Franco\u2019s death Spain encouraged the former. His case study should serve as a lesson to America\u2019s public intellectuals, if there is still such a thing, the majority having become dispensable entertainers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Ilan Stavans, author of\u00a0Quixote: The Novel and the World<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10464,"template":"","program":[],"class_list":["post-10463","faculty-books","type-faculty-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books\/10463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/faculty-books"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books\/10463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10465,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty-books\/10463\/revisions\/10465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=10463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}