Laforet, Carmen (1921—)

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Laforet, Carmen (1921—)

Spanish writer whose novels depict the quest for self-fulfillment following the Spanish Civil War. Name variations: Carmen Laforet Diaz. Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1921; married Manuel González Cerezales, in 1946 (separated 1970); children: Marta Cerezales; Cristina Cerezales; Silvia Cerezales; Manuel Cerezales; Agustín Cerezales.

Born in Barcelona in 1921, Carmen Laforet soon moved to Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, where her father worked as an architect. The family returned to Spain only in 1939, and Carmen thus missed the great upheaval during the 1930s, when Spain was convulsed by the Second Republic and the horrific Civil War (1936–39). She studied philosophy and law at the University of Barcelona but did not graduate. In 1942, she moved to Madrid, a city still ravaged by the fighting of the war.

Two years later, Laforet published her first novel, Nada (Nothing), written between January and September of 1944. It won the Nadal Prize and helped move Spanish literature away from baroque prose to simple, direct phrasing and mundane, existentialist themes found in daily life. At the same time, as the title indicates, it spoke to the emptiness, violence, and futility of life in a Spain traumatized by family and civil strife. Nada remains her most highly regarded novel and helped establish tremendismo as a Spanish literary movement, portraying an exaggerated realism emphasizing both psychological and physical violence.

In early 1946, Laforet married Manuel González Cerezales, a journalist, and gave birth to their first child that November. Marriage and motherhood limited the time and energy she could give to writing, and for three years she wrote almost nothing. When she took up her pen again, Laforet wrote for newspapers and magazines, published short stories, and began work on a new novel.

Later books included La isla y los demonios (The Island and Its Devils, 1952), La llamada (The Vocation, 1954), La mujer nueva (The New Woman, 1955), La insolación (Sunstroke, 1963), Mis páginas mejores (1967), and Paralelo 35 (1967). She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1951, and some of her later works analyzed female religiosity. The story of an adulteress' religious conversion, La mujer nueva earned the Menorca Prize and the National Literature Prize.