De mis pasos en la tierra

by Francisco Ayala

Francisco Ayala, patriarca de nuestras letras y una de las voces fundamentales de la literatura española de este siglo, es un escritor de una amplitud de registros sobradamente demostrada. En este volumen, Ayala retoma el viejo motivo del viaje como metáfora de la vida humana; entregándose, según expresa en el bello ensayo con que lo prologa, «a repasar sedentariamente mis propias trashumancias».

«La vida», dice nuestro autor, «es un viaje» ―un viaje muy largo, en mi caso personal― con jornadas de vario signo, y es bueno a la postre pararse a contemplar el camino recorrido. Tal es el viaje que nos propone el viejo maestro en las páginas de este libro. Y, como de todos los grandes viajes, también de esta aventura se sale enriquecido.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Francisco Ayala García-Duarte was a Spanish writer and teacher. Born in Granada, he had his first novel, Tragicomedia de un hombre sin espíritu, published when he was only nineteen. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, Ayala was out of the country. He returned for a brief time, later serving as secretary of the Spanish Republic's legation in Prague. At the end of the civil war he moved, as an exile, to Argentina where he lived between 1939 and 1950. There he taught sociology while continuing to publish works of fiction, literary criticism and sociology, notably a three-volume Tratado de la sociología (1947.) He also lived briefly in Brazil and after 1950 in Puerto Rico, where he taught at the University of Puerto Rico. He later moved to the United States, teaching in various universities, including Bryn Mawr, Princeton, New York University and Brooklyn College. In 1956 he returned to visit Spain for the first time but did not return to live there till 1980. He continued to write essays and fiction on various themes into his old age. Many of his writings deal with the topics of power and abuse of power. In general he did not directly written about the war in Spain, but examines it instead through other periods of history. Some of his works are:

- La cabeza de cordero (1949)
- Muerte de perros (1958)
- El fondo del vaso (1962)
- El regreso (1992) and
- El escritor en su siglo (1990)

In 2005, his memoirs were published, titled Recuerdos y olvidos.

Ayala died in November, 2009, in Madrid, when he was 103 years old.