TLS

Albert Mendez's Blind Sunflowers (Arcadia Books) is a first book, a short book and one which its author spent a lifetime preparing. Its historically and thematically related episodes grieve over some dilemmas in the immediate aftermath of Spain's civil war. A pregnant Republican, on the run with her partner, dies giving birth; the father does his best to keep the infant and himself alive. Another fugitive tries to stay silent in a cupboard while he overhears his wife being sexually blackmailed by a monk who teaches at their son's school.