Reading Javier Cercas’ Soldiers of Salamis was filled with many different emotions.

At first, reading about Cercas’ – the narrator – detachment from his literary career made me sad. However, upon quickly realizing that he had found a new impulse to write again, I felt excited for the narrator. This quote in page 55 resonated to me:

“[A]fter almost ten years without writing a book, the moment to try again had arrived” (55).

Until this point, I did not know the legitimacy of the narrator’s story; I knew it was Cercas, but I didn’t know if this was “imaginary” or “real” (as in real life). However, that had no effect on the empathy I felt towards the narrator.

Reading the “Part Two: Soldiers of Salamis” was a little “drier” compared to the story on how the narrator “Cercas” wrote the book itself. It was an engaging war tale; however, it had a very strong “autobiographical” or perhaps “non-fiction” feeling within it. What compensated for this “dryness”, though, was the context of how this story was created by Cercas. Throughout the whole book, Cercas goes through constant processes of validation. For example, when Cercas received Sanchez Mazas’ diary from Figueras, Cercas stated to have a suspicion “which insidiously crossed my mind as I read, that the notebook was a fraud, a falsification contrived by the Figueras family to deceive me, or deceive someone” (65). In response to his suspicions, Cercas seeks for and obtains documentary proof. As such, I think it was this process of validation which gave Cercas the motivation to write again. Cercas continuously made hypotheses of what could have happened; using his imagination and fragmented testimonies, he tried filling in the gaps between what was known and unknown about the moment Sanchez Mazas’ life was spared. It seemed like he was attracted to this process, feeling satisfaction and enjoyment.

Finding Bolano in the last third of the book was pleasant; it was nice to see a known name, so unexpectedly. One quote about Bolano resonated:

“Bolano felt profoundly sad, not because he knew he was going to die, but for all the books he’d planned to write and would now never write, for all his dead friends, all the young Latin Americans of his generation – soldiers killed in wars already lost – he’d always dreamt of resuscitating in his novels and who’d now stay dead for ever” (176).

I was quite moved by reading Bolano’s vision to write “for all his dead friends”, to keep the dead Latin American soldiers alive by his memories, books, and the history that he recreates. It reminded me of Auxilio Lacoutoure; it seems like Bolano himself felt the pressure of this “mission” to keep the dead Latin Americans alive through his remembrance.

Cercas and Miralles also seem to share this “mission”. An inspiring statement on 236 exemplifies just that:

“He remembers for the same reason I remember my father […] he remembers because, although they died sixty years ago, they’re still not dead, precisely because he remembers them” (236).

This re-creation, or continuation of the dead, through memory, is a very emotional topic. I think anyone can relate to this idea, regardless of how accurate or misleading the contents of this book are.

Question: Do you think Miralles was the soldier who spared Sanchez Mazas’ life? Or was it not him, like Miralles himself said? Or does it not matter?