Biography
Marina Mayoral, retired Professor of Spanish Literature at the Complutense University of Madrid, is a bilingual Galician and Spanish writer. Her best-known works in Galician are One Tree, One Goodbye (1988), He Was Called Luís (1989), Sad Weapons (1994, 32 editions in the Galician language, 24 in Spanish) and Dear Friend (1995); in Spanish, Hidden Harmony (1994). Her works in Spanish are published by Alfaguara, Cátedra and others. She has published studies on such important writers as Rosalía de Castro, Emilia Pardo Bazán and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. Her works have been translated into multiple languages, from Catalan to Chinese. She has been a columnist for the Galician newspaper La Voz de Galicia since 1995. She is an honorary member of the Royal Galician Academy.
Synopsis
Sad Weapons (136 pages) is perhaps Marina Mayoral’s best-known work of young adult fiction and has already gone through more than thirty editions. It was first published in Galician in 1994. It is a book about two sisters, Harmony and Rose, who are sent to Russia by their parents during the Spanish Civil War for their safekeeping, their life there and what happens to the members of their family. It is a charming story that is sure to touch the heart of any reader.
Sample
One misty autumnal morning many years ago, Harmony and Rose left the orphanage Our Lady of the Crystal to catch the boat that would take them to Russia. They were not orphaned girls. They were there because of the Civil War and also because of family misunderstandings.
Their father was at the front, fighting as a soldier in the Republican army, and their mother was working as a nurse in a field hospital. Harmony and Rose had uncles, aunts and other relatives, but these had different ideas from those of their parents, who preferred to leave them in an orphanage rather than in the house of people who were critical of their position in a matter as important as the one being discussed. The girls were not asked their opinion. They were told it would only be a question of days and they would soon come for them. That had been almost a year earlier.
Portico of Galician Literature 