The purpose of this volume is to provide an overview of the development of Spanish fiction in the twentieth century. The Companion is intended as a reference tool for both the specialist and the general reader interested in understanding the intellectual and aesthetic trends that have shaped the Spanish novel during what was an extraordinarily turbulent time in Spanish history. While the volume is geared towards the student of Hispanic literary studies, we hope it will appeal also to specialists in a number of disciplines such as Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies.

The eighteen contributors survey a selection of factors influencing the Spanish novel between 1898 and the end of the millennium. They trace the aesthetic evolution of the genre from nineteenth-century realism to the antirealist, self-conscious, and experimental trends characteristic of modernism and postmodernism. The volume is structured both chronologically and thematically. Wherever possible we have tried to examine developments in the novel in tandem with key moments in Spanish history, rather than as a direct consequence of them. Five such key moments or periods are examined in turn: (i) the pre-Civil War years (1898–1936); (ii) the early years of the Franco dictatorship (1939–65); (iii) the transition to democracy which began with political resistance to the Franco regime and ended in a countercultural revolution (1968–78); (iv) the social-democratic period (1982–92); and (v) the present day. The different cycles and rhythms associated with each of these five periods are reflected in the novel, that most socially conscious of literary forms.

Unlike other literary histories and critical guides, this Companion embraces a variety of aesthetic and theoretical approaches. It has not been conceived as a rigorous history or an exhaustive inventory of modern Spanish fiction; rather, it belongs to the more imprecise territory of ‘panoramic’ critical studies that take a diversity of viewpoints to suggest the more important directions the novel has taken, offering what we hope is a coherent vision of the diversity and richness of the modern Spanish novel. The necessarily selective nature of the primary texts we examine means that there are significant omissions that readers may wish to made good for themselves.

The selection of material and its division into sections and chapters is perforce subjective.