The Sleeping Voice

Chacón did something both politically necessary and literarily beautiful: returning a voice to the prisoners of Ventas, the women that Francoism sought to erase. The style is oral, almost fragmentary, which gives it an authenticity that a more literary prose would have ruined. There are moments of brutality that hurt as they should. Not an easy book to read or to forget. For those who want to understand what Francoism was beyond statistics and history textbooks.