Mito e storia in Medusa (2012) di Ricardo Menéndez Salmón

Abstract

Published in 2012, Medusa is the fifth novel by Ricardo Menéndez Salmón, a young Asturian author and an important novelist in the panorama of contemporary Spanish literature. Although the novel plot would seem quite simple – a PhD candidate is writing a thesis on the iconography of evil in the 20th century and ends up reconstructing the biography of Prohaska, a young German who, thanks to his passion for drawing and photography, becomes a propagandist of the Nazi regime – the work results from a complex stratification of different genres and levels of reading, such as the narration of the main historical events in the 20th century; the reflections about existence and the characteristics of human nature; the value of the written word, literature and art as a manifestation and expression of a reality in which time and its passage are essential, captured and therefore communicated to catch the essence of memory and its legacy.

Keywords

• contemporary spanish novel
• ricardo menéndez salmón
• medusa
• memory
• 20th century history