Dr. GarcĂa's patients (Tusquets Ed., 2017) is the fourth novel in the series Episodes of an endless war by Almudena Grandes. They precede her Agnes and joy (2010) The Jules Verne Reader (2012) and Manolita's three weddings (2014) Frankenstein's mother (2020) is the next book in the series. Dr. GarcĂa's patients It has been the winning novel of the 2018 National Narrative Prize.
With this new novel, Almudena Grandes takes the war beyond the Spanish borders. Doctor Guillermo GarcĂa Medina will meet again with his old friend Manuel Arroyo BenĂtez, and will enroll in a dangerous spy story. With this book we come to the end of an endless war.
Dr. GarcĂa's patients: the end of an endless war
spy network
Dr. GarcĂa's patients is a novel that is part of the saga Episodes of an endless war that tells some events in post-war Spanish history. This particular novel moves a little further away in space from the others: events from the Third Reich are recounted and the action also moves to Buenos Aires.. However, reading this novel can be carried out independently of the others, although the reader familiar with the novels will find some references and characters shared between them.
This is the story of Guillermo GarcĂa Medina, a doctor who will be forced to abandon his profession due to the tragic circumstances that accompany the episodes of a war.. His life is linked to that of several people. On the one hand, that of his good friend, Manuel Arroyo BenĂtez, who returns after having been in exile and involves him in a spy story to dismantle a Nazi plot that helps war criminals escape after having lost the war in Europe. .
Moreover, On his way he crosses paths with Adrián Gallardo Ortega, a volunteer from the Blue Division who survives as best he can in Berlin, and whose identity Manuel has taken over.. The plan: leave for Argentina with a false identification to find out the whereabouts of the many Nazis who escaped to America at the end of the war. The objective is to expose to public light the help of the Franco regime to the already decomposed National Socialist.
Failure, uprooting, justice, truth
The novel is, therefore, a dangerous spy network that seeks to bring out the truth about the Franco regime and of which the European democracies ignored, as well as doing justice to the Spanish republican exiles and giving the reader a fascinating story that mixes fiction with reality. And another important character in the novel is Clara Stauffer, a woman who really existed and who dedicated herself to helping the Nazi survivors, criminals, who sought to leave Germany to avoid their responsibility to justice.
This book has a wide selection of characters. Although the three protagonists are Guillermo (the doctor), Manuel (his best friend) and Adrián (the Blue Division volunteer), there are also the false names of the characters, as well as many others that appear in the novel. But the narrative is very accessible in terms of identifying all of them. A novel with five chapters that also includes some complementary fragments that perfect the narrative and that at no time unbalance the main action. On the contrary, It is a very entertaining story that goes beyond the events of the Spanish civil war to talk about failure, uprooting, justice and, above all, truth..
Conclusions
Almudena Grandes gives the reader a new part of his Episodes of an Endless War, a story full of intrigue that can be read independently of the other novels, knowing how to weave exciting plots about spies. In Dr. GarcĂa's patients The story takes a further direction than the others, the action reaching Argentina, in an attempt to uncover Franco's relations with the extinct regime of the Third Reich and with some of its members who escaped to different parts of the world. This is a survival story in which the game of identities is crucial for its protagonists to stay alive.. Likewise, it is an analogy that the author wanted to create to explain the vital loss suffered by people who unfortunately have to go through a war.
About the author
Almudena Grandes was born in Madrid in 1960. She studied Geography and History at the Complutense University of Madrid and later she would dedicate herself to writing texts for publishers, also working as an editor and proofreader. For many years she has had her own column in the newspaper El PaĂs and all of his opinion articles have been collected in books. His openly left-wing political stance has earned him criticism and support from many people alike.
At 1989 he published his first novel, The ages of Lulu, an erotic story that made her known as a narrative writer. Many more projects would come after her, such as Malena is a tango name (1994) Rough Winds (2o02), The frozen heart (2007) Kisses on bread (2015) or the series Episodes of an Endless War (2010-2020). Grandes died in his hometown in 2021 due to cancer.