Fireline

PREMIO DE LA CRÍTICA 2020

UNO DE LOS MEJORES LIBROS DEL AÑO SEGÚN EL CULTURAL, ESQUIRE, EL PERIÓDICO Y VOZPÓPULI

July 1938, thousands of young people fight in the tragic Battle of the Ebro. Their names are not the ones remembered by History, but everything that happened to them is part of our memory.

"Ambitious and solid, this work avoids Manichaeism and simplifications, to the point of tracing the great novel in favor of national reconciliation."
Santos Sanz Villanueva, El Cultural

"That's the bad thing about these wars. That you hear the enemy call his mother in the same language as you."

During the night of July 24-25, 1938, the XI Mixed Brigade of the Republic's army crosses the river to establish a bridgehead in Castellets del Segre. In the vicinity of the town, half a battalion of infantry, a Moroccan tabor, and a company of the Legion defend the area. The Battle of the Ebro, the crudest and bloodiest battle ever fought on Spanish soil, is about to begin.

Combining fiction with historical data and personal testimonies in a masterful way, Arturo Pérez-Reverte places the reader, with overwhelming realism, among those who, voluntarily or by force, fought on the battlefronts of the Civil War. Their names are not the ones remembered by History, but everything that happened to them resonates in these pages with the drama of a memory that belongs to all of us.

This is not a novel about the Civil War, but about the men and women who fought in it. The story of the parents and grandparents of many Spaniards today.

Critics have said:
"The definitive novel about the Spanish Civil War. [An] immense, immersive literary project, and, despite the raw nature of the story, powerfully fascinating due to the transcendence of the moment it plunges us into."
Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, Cultura/s of La Vanguardia

"An astonishing, harsh and brilliant book. Everything is there, everything in those pages written with infernal rhythm and skill. A book to read, to meditate on, and to return to. Línea de fuego is a masterpiece, a literary cathedral, and Arturo Pérez-Reverte's best novel."
Juan Gómez-Jurado, El Correo

"680 hypnotic pages, intense in emotion and humanity."
Javier Ors, La Razón

"There is much more historical truth in Línea de fuego than in the History that politicians want to tell us."
Julia Navarro

"It will leave no one indifferent. He knows what he's talking about, and he knows how to tell it."
Jesús García Calero, ABC

"A mature novel about bewilderment, helplessness and fear."
Antonio Lucas, El Mundo

"Immense, moving and essential. [...] A novel of bone and living flesh. Without fat. It is Arturo Pérez Reverte in his most splendid literary maturity, stripped more than ever of conditioners."
Antonio Pérez Henares, El Día de Valladolid

"A human, harsh novel, as that war was, all wars, in which everyone loses and only a few win."
Rosa Martí, Esquire