“Joan Sales’ outstanding novel, Uncertain Glory, is fiction from the ranks of the defeated in the Spanish Civil War. Written in 1948, the book was first published in Barcelona in 1956 – but this was only a first version, written under Franco’s censorship. Sales continued to write and develop the novel till it was published in its present full form in 1971. The author had fought in Madrid and in Aragon. The novel grew out of his experiences in the war.

Sales’ loyalties are nowhere in doubt. But the novel contains no political message and yields no ground to glib partisan flag waving. It is in fact refreshingly free from the so-called glories of war. Sales provides a bare-knuckle account of physical and moral devastation: of ordinary individuals with all their loves, desires, and frailties trapped in some great game that fashions and refashions their destinies” – Rudrangshu Mukherjee

“A timeless classic about lost illusions, lost ideals, lost youth, now translated into English for the first time” – Economist Books of the Year

“Wonderfully readable, with the vivid images of the physical world and everyday life that give substance to fiction interspersed with sharp conversation, scatological philosophical rants and touches of (usually dark) humour, Uncertain Glory is a major novel that expresses the disillusion of a generation who fought a just war against fascism, but lost their idealism and youth” – Michael Eaude, Literary Reviews