Noche

Noche is the story of the degradation of a family, that of Don Francisco and Doña Dolores, but it is also many stories at the same time. Priests, prostitutes, lovers whose beauty makes one lose reason, cheated husbands, illegitimate children, crimes of passion... All of this makes up the universe of this novel that takes place in turn-of-the-century Spain: that of mass, mantilla and procession, that of the cafes packed with gatherings until the wee hours of the morning, that of the low-class brothels and loyal clientele. A hungry Spain that lives on appearances. Sawa, a bohemian author and lucid witness of those times, wrote this novel in 1888 following the naturalist current that prevailed then. His descriptions of the most sordid environments and the misery that inhabited the lives of these beings are truly overwhelming. Night is a brutal and "ugly" picture of that Spain, a novel that is read without rest, where the rhythm does not drop and where the author breaks with the image that was then held of women and poses the dangers of a moral invented at the service of a few.