Camilo José Cela

David Henn (University College London)
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The first Spanish novelist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Camilo José Cela was born in May 1916 in the hamlet of Iria Flavia, Galicia, to a middle-class family of Galician, British, and Italian stock. In 1925 the family moved to Madrid where, subsequently, the young Cela pursued various university courses, including medicine, law, and literature. Twelve months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and with Madrid under siege, he left the capital in July 1937 in order to join General Franco’s army. Although before the war Cela had published a little poetry, his literary career began in earnest with the appearance of his first novel in 1942. In the next twenty years Cela’s fiction and travel writing established him as the leading Spanish writer of the post-war period,…

2824 words

Citation: Henn, David. "Camilo José Cela". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 October 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11999, accessed 29 March 2024.]

11999 Camilo José Cela 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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