Subtitulo: Travels in Castilian Spain

Description:
セルバンテス追悼ミサの場面から始まるこの本は、著者が１９８７年に留学したフランコ体制の影が残るマドリッドと、その十年後に訪れたカスティーリャ地方での経験をもとに書かれたエッセイ／旅行記。セルバンテスと『ドン・キホーテ』についての分析を軸にしながら、スペイン社会の大きな変化と、スペイン人気質の変わらない部分について考察しています。著者はイギリス人ジャーナリスト。

In 1987, when Miranda France spent a year in Madrid as a student, the new freedoms of post-Franco Spain were intoxicating: divorce, regional languages, contraceptives, kissing in the street, even the public consumption of drugs had become legal. At the university where, in 1936, Republicans had fought Nationalists in hand-to-hand combat, girls with Snoopy folders now sat alongside men with well-washed hair and boat shoes. Yet Madrid was also a mecca for fiery South American communists and moody Basque nationalists. Against this background, Miranda France describes a love-affair with a Peruvian revolutionary; as well as an eccentric cast of characters - landladies, roommates, neighbors, and fellow students.

Then, in 1998, she returns to Spain to revisit the countryside, towns, and great cities of the central part of the country - Madrid, Toledo, Avila, Segovia, Salamanca - and to discover how much has changed in ten years. With the new prosperity; much has altered, and the old bargain between men and women is over. But many values have endured, as she learns from a private detective, a shepherd, various nuns, two belly dancers, and a Castilian separatist, among others.

Alongside this narrative is her investigation into the world’s first novel, Cervantes’ Don Quixote - published in 1605 and the most translated book after the Bible. She discovers a work of genius, a book that even modem Spaniards believe holds the key to their identity; their failings, and triumphs.

In Don Quixote’s Delusions, Miranda France has captured those moments and details that can help us understand ourselves, as well as a foreign culture. She has distilled her experiences into a book that is both unsparingly truthful and absurdly, delightfully, funny.


CONTENTS:

1. A Dead Man in Madrid......1

2. The Taxi-Driver’s Cousin’s Friend......17

3. Don Quixote’s Delusions......30

4. Transvestites, Anarchists and a Peruvian Poet......46

5. Double Lives and Double Cheeseburgers......55

6. Is Anything Real?......71

7. Pastoral Scenes in Avila......91

8. Love in a Cold Climate......109

9. A Question of Faith......129

10. Is Burgos Boring?......154

11. A Little Place in La Mancha......176

12. Which Are You? Quixote or Sancho?......194

13. An Angel in Segovia......206

14. New Life in Castile......222

Further Reading......236

Index......238