To Bury the Dead is an investigation of a brutal political murder and fascinating literary feud hidden by the dust of the Spanish Civil War. A story about real people whose lives were caught up in and shattered by political events, it exposes power power struggles, ideological feuds and deadly political rivalries.

Dyma gyfrol sy'n ymchwilio i gefndir ac effeithiau'r Rhyfel Cartref yn Sbaen. Mae'n stori am fywydau pobl go-iawn a effeithiwyd gan y gwrthdaro gwleidyddol.

The twentieth century, characterised by Eric Hobsbawm as an ‘age of extremes’ ended, to some people's surprise, with the cold war triumphalism of the United States in hegemonic mode. The great conflict of mid-century, seen by many participants as one between the plutocrats and the proletariat, was being reinterpreted as a struggle between two rival totalitarianisms, equally objectionable, the one defeated in 1945, the other in 1989. Sensitive arithmetical calculations fuelled debate as to which one was worse: how many died in the Holocaust, how many in the Gulag? For some, we had reached the end of history: God Bless America!

To Welsh participants, the overwhelming tide of sympathy had been with the Left. This was the People's War against Fascism, which had begun in Spain where the likes of Jack Roberts, Abertridwr, fought with the Welsh Brigades and heroic Welsh coal-ship captains repeatedly risked the hazards of a Fascist blockade of Bilbao to supply the Republican cause. Soft pacifists by the dozen abandoned their principles to fight the Nazi menace. The Marxist historian Gwyn Alf Williams, who shared these sympathies, nevertheless understood his ‘sullen craft’ well enough to urge his students to savour contradictions and relish paradoxes. History may not be the most intellectually demanding of subjects but it takes some beating for sheer complexity: for its subject matter is the human heart and, in the mid-twentieth century, human hearts were impassioned.

In this haunting book Ignacio Martínez de Pisón pursues a complex set of relationships between comrades on the Left in search of the truth behind the betrayal and subsequent demise of José Robles, a writer of Galician ancestry who had moved to the United States to teach at John Hopkins University. There he was reunited with a friend he had made in Spain, the American writer John Dos Passos. When Robles returned to Spain to support the Republican cause, Dos Passos maintained a regular correspondence and it was he who first tried to get to the truth behind his friend's tragic death encountering a conspiracy of silence that speaks volumes for its age.

It is a wall of silence that Ignacio Martínez de Pisón has now penetrated brilliantly. His sheer dogged determination to pursue all available sources elicits admiration at each turn. He confirms that Robles was executed on Soviet orders as a suspected Trotskyite. In passing, we learn how close George Orwell came to meeting a similar fate and how mutual jealousies played their part in Hemingway's disavowal of his erstwhile friend. For at the time, a great swathe of the intelligentsia had convinced itself of the inevitability of the triumph of scientific socialism, with the Soviet Union in the vanguard of history. Orwell, whose stature was to wax as the Soviet Union's red star waned, had difficulty finding a publisher for his Homage to Catalonia. From its publication in 1938 to Orwell's death in 1950, the book sold less than a thousand copies. In post-war Wales, cinema audiences cheered each newsreel appearance of ‘Uncle Joe’. That such attitudes were not confined to the Welsh industrial heartland was evidenced in the post-war victory of Attlee over Churchill, so shocking to the Americans, and the wave of support for measures to build a bright socialist future in this green and pleasant land.

The story here presented is not merely literary or even confined to politics. It raises the most profound ethical issues. Plutocracy softened by democracy has triumphed for good or ill; socialism may or may not have been tried and tested. If the idea of a just society remains as powerful as ever, we now surely know that we cannot get there without the love of God and the care of our neighbour. It is a compelling tale, fluently translated into English by Anne McLean and handsomely produced by Parthian in its Carnival imprint.

David Barnes

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.