The Holy Innocents

A shattering tale of oppression and resistance during Franco’s dictatorship, by a beloved Spanish novelist

“Passion in ordinary lives, sobriety and melancholy are the flavors of Delibes’s writing . . . with a profound empathy for nature and the poor. . . . The Holy Innocents [is] a ferocious story.”—The Guardian

Named One of the Best 100 Spanish-Language Novels of the Twentieth Century (El Mundo) • Adapted into an Award-Winning Film by Mario Camus

In the arid province of Extremadura in 1960s Spain, life on a country estate carries on as it has for centuries: wealthy landowners live in luxury while workers endure lives of poverty and humiliation. Amid this exploitation and injustice live Régula, an estate’s gatekeeper, and her husband, Paco, the hunting attendant of the contemptuous Señorito Iván. Régula’s brother Azarías toils as a farmhand, but he prefers chasing tawny owls at night, training his pet jackdaw, and caring for his young niece, who is bedridden. When Paco is injured, the nature-loving Azarías is forced to take over as hunting attendant. But after Señorito Iván commits an act of enormous cruelty following an unsuccessful hunt, it is only a matter of time before the simmering tensions between the aristocracy and the workers explode.

A perennial Spanish classic, translated into twelve languages but never before into English, The Holy Innocents is a searing tale of human cruelty and alienation, in which resistance and liberation are not just necessary but possible.

Miguel Delibes (1920–2010) was one of Spain’s most popular twentieth-century writers. He is the author of Five Hours with Mario and The Heretic, among other works. Peter Bush is an award-winning literary translator from Catalan, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Colm Tóibín is an award-winning novelist and critic.