Following his unconvincing meditation on American atrocities in the Vietnam war in “The speed of light” Javier Cercas returns to his own country’s history for his latest work. “The anatomy of a moment” revisits the theme of the Spanish Civil War and its consequences that Cercas so brilliantly explored in “Soldiers of Salamis”. However in his new book he eschews fiction, even the “post-modern” variety that he practices, which blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary. Instead he employs a part philosophical, part journalistic meditation on the 1981 attempted coup to overthrow Spanish democracy.

“The anatomy of a moment” focuses on the three parliamentarians who refused to duck when the Civil Guard who invaded the Cortes opened fire. They were Gutteriez Mellado, a former Francoist general now deputy Prime Minister, Santiago Carillo, head of the Spanish Communist party, and Adolfo Suarez, the outgoing Prime Minister. Suarez is above all the hero of the book – in Cercas account a Francoist functionary and “provincial non-entity” who grew into the architect of democracy and a giant of Spanish history. The author returns again and again to the image of Suarez sitting alone on the prime minister’s bench as the bullets fly around him, one of only three people prepared to risk their necks while those with more impecible democratic credentials cower behind their desks, as most of the rest of us would naturally and rationally have done in similar circumstances.

Parts of the book are difficult – the author talks to the reader as if they are already au fait with the history and politics of Spain. This leads, I thought, to a richer experience than books which spoonfeed the reader the historical background: in the end you feel you have earned the understanding you have achieved.

In places the book has the characteristics of a non-fiction thriller as the details of both the coup, led by senior elements in the army, and the countercoup, led by the King, are plotted. The book is also very moving, particularly regarding the travails of Suarez in later life, and a deeply affecting coda when the author reflects upon the life and politics of his own father.

The book is also deeply political, rejecting a current view prevalent in Spain that the rupture between Francoism and democracy was false and that Suarez ensured that those who had power under the dictatorship retained it under the constitutional monarchy. Cercas argues instead that the rupture was real and that Suarez was a “hero of the retreat” from dictatorship. That the author is prepared to set out such forthright opinions on this and other aspects of the coup add to the pleasure of the book: it is widely researched, deeply opinionated history, provocative, but not gratuitously controversialist. It demands the reader thinks while keeping them entertained.

A great book.

This book is a fascinating look at the rise and fall of the Commanche nation. Its intensely exciting and sympathetic to Native Americans in general and the Commanche in particular. However it is also intensely violent, taking a clear sighted, almost forensic, look at the practices of Commanche war-making, particularly their routine use of rape and torture.

(Speaking as a Celt myself) the author draws a not unreasonable comparison of Comanche warfare to Celtic warfare of a bygone era to undermine any racist presumptions about the origins of warriors cruelty. He also notes the intensely political purpose behind Comanche terrorism on settlers and buffalo hunters, and that Texan warfare was itself brutal and racist. However while he spends time describing Comanche violence in some detail, he frequently skates across comparable white violence – explicitly avoiding a deep discussion of the Sand Creek massacre for example.

The author appears to like and admire Quanah, particularly the Quanah of later years who struggled to lead his people in peace after years of violence. Quanah described himself as having been a “bad man” but in later life he appears to have become a warm and generous one with little animosity to whites. However the author’s real hero in this book seems to be the enigmatic Col MacKenzie, Quanah’s nemesis, rather than Quanah himself. One should be grateful to the author for bringing this fascinating man and his role in the violence of the era to greater public attention: for all his crankiness he stands in a much more positive light that the strange, and more infamous, figure of Custer.

For those interested in Hollywood history the author notes how the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah’s mother, was the inspiration for arguably John Ford’s greatest Western, The Searchers. However he doesn’t mention that MacKenzie seems to have been Ford’s model for Lt Col Kirby Yorke in Rio Grande, another one of John Wayne’s classic roles: the climax of that film – the Colonel leading his troopers into Mexico to attack the Apache on Sheridan’s orders – is something that the author mentions MacKenzie actually did when not fighting the Comanche.

It is a book that can comfortably sit alongside Dee Brown’s classic “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee” and which complements it, providing greater detail to some aspects of that book and a deeper understanding of the politics and attitudes of white America to Native Americans in the course of their conquest.