These two books examine the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, years of poverty and silence. Emili Teixidor, who lived from 1933 to 2012, was a Catalan teacher and journalist who wrote a number of novels and books for children in his native language. Manuel Rivas (born in 1957), one of Spain’s best-known novelists, writes in the language of Galicia, a region in northwest Spain. Both languages were suppressed by Franco’s fascist dictatorship. Black Bread is a sombre novel, set in the 1940s, with strong autobiographical echoes; The Low Voices is a witty novel-cum-memoir of a happy 1960s childhood.

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