Sons of night

A fascinating memoir of the Spanish Civil War as well as a new approach to writing history, The Sons of Night is two books in one. First is Antoine Gimenez’s Memories of the War in Spain, a compelling and lyrical account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. The other is In Search of the Sons of Night by the Gimenologues, a group of friends who became historians over the twelve-year adventure of publishing Gimenez’s memoir. The second book, a profoundly innovative form of historiography, records the fascination Gimenez’s account held for the group and the many branching paths of inquiry it led them down. The latter begins with eighty-two “endnotes” to the memoir, each the equivalent of a chapter that follows a particular historical thread or explores a question raised by Gimenez’s text. This is followed by the biographies of various people appearing in the memoir, many based on the friendships the historians formed with the now-elderly revolutionaries. The book closes with an Afterword discussing theoretical issues raised by the memoir and seven appendices. It also includes a foreword by Dolors Marín Silvestre.

Antoine Gimenez (the pseudonym of Bruno Salvadori) was born in 1910. He was an anarchist militant and a volunteer militiaman who fought in the Durruti Column during the Spanish Civil War. He died in Marseille in 1982.

The Gimenologues are a small group of friends who have become historians by dedicating themselves to the twelve-year process of publishing Memories of the Spanish War by Antoine Gimenez, first in French, now in English.