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I el cel ens va caure al damunt

And the Sky Fell Down on Us | Edicions 62, 2023

Albert Forns’ novel describes one of the most sadistic bombing attacks of the Spanish Civil War: Granollers, 31 May 1938.

 On Tuesday, 31 May 1938, five Italian planes drop sixty bombs on Granollers. It’s rush hour, five past nine in the morning, and the explosions do their devastating work among the most vulnerable members of the population. Most of the 226 dead are children on their way to school and women waiting in ration queues. The bombing attack, one of the most brutal of the Civil War, lasts only one minute and this minute changes the town’s life forever.

I el cel ens va caure al damunt is a reconstruction of those sixty fateful seconds through still-existing eye-witness accounts of what happened that day, testimonies that have saved from oblivion. In the gripping style of his novelised account, Albert Forns tells the story of twenty lives that were shattered by the bombing. This journey back to 1938 not only gives voice to the victims as human beings, and renders homage to them, but it also portrays the longings of a country and its people before the calamity that befell them.

I el cel ens va caure al damunt

And the Sky Fell Down on Us | Edicions 62, 2023

Albert Forns’ novel describes one of the most sadistic bombing attacks of the Spanish Civil War: Granollers, 31 May 1938.

 On Tuesday, 31 May 1938, five Italian planes drop sixty bombs on Granollers. It’s rush hour, five past nine in the morning, and the explosions do their devastating work among the most vulnerable members of the population. Most of the 226 dead are children on their way to school and women waiting in ration queues. The bombing attack, one of the most brutal of the Civil War, lasts only one minute and this minute changes the town’s life forever.

I el cel ens va caure al damunt is a reconstruction of those sixty fateful seconds through still-existing eye-witness accounts of what happened that day, testimonies that have saved from oblivion. In the gripping style of his novelised account, Albert Forns tells the story of twenty lives that were shattered by the bombing. This journey back to 1938 not only gives voice to the victims as human beings, and renders homage to them, but it also portrays the longings of a country and its people before the calamity that befell them.