The Island and the Demons

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1952 · Authors: Carmen Laforet

Carmen Laforet was born in Barcelona in 1921 and died in Madrid in 2004. At the age of two she moved with her family to Gran Canaria. In 1952 she published The Island and the Demons , her second novel, set on the island of Gran Canaria, where she narrates the story of the young Marta Camino, her hopes and relationships, against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War.

«[...] How had she come to think that childhood was boring? She tried to remember what she did on the beach in the summers of her childhood and why she had extraordinary fun. Her grandmother sent her to Las Canteras every morning, with a maid. That was a much bigger beach than this one, on the other side of the isthmus. A beach several kilometres long, shaped like a shell, full of huts and people in summer. She played with several children, daughters of her mother’s friends. They made sand castles and boats that the tide destroyed. When her grandfather came to pick her up at noon, it always seemed too early. Then she had no worries. She did not think it necessary to leave the island and meet different people, similar to the complicated heroes of novels, to be happy. [...]»

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