''Victus, the fall of Barcelona,'' is a

historical novel Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...

by the

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

Albert Sánchez Piñol Albert Sánchez Piñol (; born 11 July 1965) is a Spanish anthropologist, non-fiction writer and novelist writing in Catalan and Spanish. He has been described as a "significant European writer". Theroux, Marcel (19 December 2005)"Cold Skin" ' ...

published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

in September 2014. It is based in the fictitious biography of the Lieutenant Colonel Marti Zuviria who, being 98, tells from

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his memories as an engineer serving the commander

Antoni de Villarroel Antonio de Villarroel y Pelaez (1656, Barcelona – 1726, A Coruña) was a Spanish military commander in the service of Philip V until 1710 in the War of the Spanish Succession. After the disgrace of the Duke of Orléans, he switched to the ...

during the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...

, especially during the Siege of Barcelona. The book was written originally in Spanish, but was quickly translated into Catalan and many other languages, including English. Since its original publication in October 2012, the book has sold more than 200,000 copies either in Catalan or Spanish, and the rights of translation have been sold for the book to be translated into Russian, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, French, Korean, and Croatian. In 2015, the author published the novel's sequel, '' Vae Victus''

Controversy

On September the 4, 2014, the book's launch ceremony in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...

was cancelled because of pressures coming from the Spanish Embassy in the

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, who declared the ceremony as "sensitive for the political moment" and blamed the book for "historical distortion" in favour of the independentist Catalonian movement. Juliette van Wersch, the Dutch editor of ''Victus'', described the fact as censorship, but avoiding any comment about the alleged historical distortion.

References

External links

* 2012 novels Spanish-language novels War of the Spanish Succession in fiction {{2010s-hist-novel-stub