Novel
The River
El Jarama
Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio · 1956
Synopsis
On a summer Sunday, eleven young people from Madrid spend the day on the banks of the Jarama, near the Viveros bridge, to swim and escape the boredom of the city. They swim, eat, chat and rest under the trees on the bank. Not far away, at Mauricio's inn, the regulars drink, talk and play cards. The narrative moves from one place to the other over sixteen hours, reporting almost nothing but the conversations, without commenting on the characters or probing their thoughts.
Context
Written from October 1954 to March 1955, the novel won the 1955 Nadal Prize, whose jury praised the dialogue, and appeared in February 1956. A simultaneous and objective narrative in the third person, it alternates settings like a film script, and it has become a reference of post-war social realism. Critics remain divided between those who see it as a milestone and those who find in it only an exercise in style. Carlos Saura paid homage to it in his first film, Los golfos.
Who it is for
A novel almost entirely in dialogue, with no narrator to explain; one must accept its slowness.
Prizes and reception
Nadal Prize 1955, then the Critics' Prize; chosen in 2001 by El Mundo among the hundred best Spanish novels of the century.