Sánchez Ferlosio, Rafael

b. 1927, Rome

   Writer

   Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio remains one of the major literary figures of the post-Civil War period. His standing is based partly on his first novel Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhuí (Industrias y Andanzas de Alfanhuí, 1951), a rich, picaresque fantasy, rooted in recognizable settings, which chronicles a young boy's adventures with strange masters and magical creatures. National recognition came with his second novel, The One Day of the Week (El Jarama, 1955), Nadal Prize winner in 1955, which accurately records the ordinary conversations of eleven working-class youngsters from Madrid as they try to relieve the summer heat and the tedium of the working week with a Sunday picnic on the banks of the river Jarama. Ironically, the only significant event to break an otherwise boring day is the death by drowning of Lucita. The language of the novel successfully combines the banal conversations and madrileño slang of the youngsters with very precise, almost scientific descriptions of the geography of the river and the surrounding countryside. Generally regarded at the time of publication as a social realist "slice of life", offering a critique of workingclass existence under the Franco regime, the novel has since given rise to all manner of readings, including historical, social and allegorical interpretations.

   In 1974, Sánchez Ferlosio published the first two volumes of Las semanas del jardín (Garden Weeks), a collection of essays mainly on language and linguistic theory as well as translations of short stories. In 1986, he finally broke a thirtyyear silence in his fictional output with El testimonio de Yarfoz (The Testimony of Yarfoz) and in the same year he published two books of essays and one of journalistic writings.

   Begun in 1969, El testimonio de Yarfoz is presented as a mere appendix to a much larger work, La historia general de las guerras barcielas (The History of the Barcielan Wars), dealing with the history of a fictional ancient civilization living alongside the river Barciela. Like The One Day of the Week, El testimonio de Yarfoz is written in the third person, but in keeping with Cervantine traditions, the narrator of the novel is a mere editor of a text supposedly put together by a certain Ogai el Viejo (Old Ogai). While it seeks to reaffirm the objective validity of history, Yarfoz's chronicle, set against a vast historical canvas and constructed out of hetero-genous materials, is complex and demanding, consisting mainly of detailed digressions and sometimes tedious commentaries (e.g. on geological formations).

   See also: novel

   Further reading

   - Clarke, S. and A. (1969) Industrias y Andanzas de Alfanhuí, London: Harrap (a good edition of Sánchez Ferlosio's first novel, including an informative introduction and textual commentary).

   - Villanueva, D. (1973) "El Jarama" de Sánchez Ferlosio: su estructura y significado, Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago; 2nd corrected edn Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994, (a very useful study of Sánchez Ferlosio's major text; the second edition contains an updated bibliographical appendix).

   - d'Ors, I. (1995) El testimonio de Yarfoz de Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio o, Los Fragmentos del todo, Kassel: Reichenberger (doctoral thesis on the author's "come back" novel, including a very detailed bibliographical appendix).

   BARRY JORDAN