A Death In Zamora - Softcover

Barayón, Ramón Sender

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1882260309 ISBN 13: 9781882260300

Publisher: Calm Unity Press, 2019

Synopsis

A gripping personal account of the Spanish Civil War, this memoir is also the story of a man discovering his roots.  The author's parents were separated in the confusion of the war, and his mother jailed and eventually assassinated by a fascist execution squad in her hometown of Zamora when the author was just a small child.  He and his baby sister were reared by a foster mother in the United States, and he did not return to Spain for another four decades.

The death of his mother, Amparo, was cloaked in secrecy, deepened  by his father's refusal to disclose any information about her.  Finally, at the ago of forty-six, after his father's death, and with his wife Judith's assistances as translator, he traveled back to his native land to retrace the events leading to his mother's extrajudicial killing via interviews with family and family friends.

A Death in Zamora has all the drama and tension of a good mystery, all the more engrossing because the events it recounts are so shameful and so true.  In addition to the personal tragedy of his mother, we learn first hand of the horrific suffering that many other Spanish women experienced at the hands of Generalissimo Franco and his depraved followers.

Ramón Sender Barayón, son of the Spanish novelist-in-exile Ramón J. Sender, enjoys various careers as composer, author, artist, communitarian, and proud father of three sons. Published titles include Zero Weather, a future fantasy; A Planetary Sojourn, his collected essays and articles; Home Free Home, a lengthy history of two open-door rural communes.   He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Judith Levy-Sender, a retired public high school teacher, artist and human rights activist, whose fluency with Spanish made this book possible.

This book describes a son's search in the 1980s Spain for his birth mother's story through interviews with family members and childhood friends. With his wife Judith as translator, the author returned to Zamora 48 years after he and his sister were evacuated from the fascist zone to France after their mother had been imprisoned for several months and then shot. First published hard cover in 1989 by The University of New Mexico Press to reviews in the New York Times and other dailies. An updated Spanish edition launched in Madrid in 2018.  This new English edition includes these updates and appendices.

About this title

Review:

“Intelligent and Impassioned” – San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“A Very Moving Document” – New York Times Book Review

“Intelligent and Impassioned” – San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“A Death In Zamora is a work of genius. . . To create such a book, a writer must know how to walk on thin ice and not fall through.  Ramón Sender Barayón's story of the search for his mother who was executed when he was an infant, her story, his father's story, are quite simply both heartbreaking and inspiring, and  told with consummate artistry and the sort of emotional quotient that may be found only in the greatest literary artists.” – Alvah Bessie, author of Men in Battle; The Un-Americans; The Symbol; One for My Baby; Inquisition in Eden.

“An extraordinary odyssey in time, space and memory. . . a book that deserves to be much more widely known and read.” – Helen Graham quoted from her 2003 Len Crome memorial lecture at the Imperial War Museum, London, held under the auspices of the International Brigade Memorial Trust.  Professor Graham, is the author of The Spanish Republic At War; The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction. 

About the Author:

"Ramón Sender Barayón figures in the Bay Area counterculture as electronic music pioneer, co- producer of theTrips Festival, chief remembrancer of the Morning Star and Wheeler Ranch communes. Born in Spain in 1934, he provides a link between the radical communal traditions of the Old and the New. In exile from fascist Spain with his novelist father and sister. . . he fetched up in New York before continuing his music studies at The San Francisco Conservatory and Mills College." -- Iain Boal -- "West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California." (PM Press, 2011)

About this edition

• Publisher: Calm Unity Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1882260309
• ISBN 13: 9781882260300
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256