“Soldiers of Salamis” by Javier Cercas
by jenna loupret
The Soldiers of Salamis is a novel based loosely on real events, told by a narrator with the same name as our author, Javier Cercas. Whether it’s supposed to be him or that’s just an aspect of the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy of the story, I am not sure. The fiction/nonfiction story is divided into three parts— one, how Cercas discovered and became obsessed with the amazing survival story of Rafael Sanchez Mazas; two, a first-person account of Sanchez Mazas’ time during the war and his escape from execution and three, how Cercas comes in contact with who he believes is the soldier who spared Mazas’ life.
One of the first times I came to Vancouver as an adult, The Vancouver public library literally stopped me in my tracks, I was so amazed by how beautiful and grand it was.
Overall, the novel reads like the narrator trying to piece together the plot as he goes. The reader gets the sense that you are discovering the narrative at the same time as the narrator, which gives the novel a somewhat of a thriller or mystery vibe. An interesting aspect of the novel is that the story Cercas is trying to recount isn’t an unheard-of story, it’s actually the opposite. Many of the characters he interviews during the first part of the novel tell Cercas that Mazas’ himself told his story to anyone who would listen. I found this interesting because the tale reads like a mystery but the story is already very well known. However, what makes this “true-tale” relevant is the way that Cercas tells it. Before the narrator “wrote” this book, the miraculous story of Mazas’ was just rumours or gossip and Cercas gives it life.
Downtown Vancouver at night <3 I love the lights!
The novel as a whole is interesting because of its biographical elements. A lot of the characters were real people, the narrator himself is named after the author (or is the author, still not sure). This memoir-like piece of fiction makes us question how much fiction is influenced by reality and how much reality can feel like fiction. This concept, I feel, is alluded to in the novel, on page 29 (of my copy) in a conversation between Cercas and Aguirre. Cercas remarks “Because it sounds like fiction” and Aguirre answers “All wars are full of stories that sound like fiction”. In this scene, they are directly talking about the events that inspired Cercas’ novel. I think that these quotes illustrate how fiction and reality are more closely linked than we think and therefore “the truth” and the perspectives that come along with that are irrelevant.
“The reader gets the sense that you are discovering the narrative at the same time as the narrator, which gives the novel a somewhat of a thriller or mystery vibe.”
Yes, absolutely. The story the book tells is also (notionally, at least) the story of how the book gets written. This is perhaps in some senses therefore the most self-reflexive of the books we’ve read, but not the only self-reflexive one…. W, for instance, is self-reflexive if in a different way; and so is Black Shack Alley, though there it may be less noticeable.