Wolframio

Wolframio is tungsten, a metal essential to the Germans for the production of munitions in World War II, and mined in Spain and Portugal under agreements made with Franco. In this novel Ainhoa Rebolledo creates a work of fiction from historical facts and her autobiographical story.

When Ainhoa returns home to her village in Galicia to visit her parents, she ends up opening the door to a family history she was unaware of, that her mother had previously kept secret from her. This novel is a conversation between mother and daughter which begins with the scandal of her grandmother’s pregnancy and resulting marriage and goes on to reveal a history of the village and its people that relates the familiar with global events and makes the reader question any preconceived notions about shame and culpability.

The German mining of Tungsten in the Galician mining village of Fontao brought in hordes of German workers, but also unprecedented amounts of money, from which the local economy thrived and that benefitted its people enormously. Ainhoa discovers that in fact her own grandfather left behind a fortune that enabled the family to achieve things they could otherwise only have dreamed of.

…The questions raised by the story and the lack of any black-and-white approach – or answer – make this quite a unique book. And the author handles its moral issues with a directness that encourages the reader not to be judgmental; to keep an open mind and empathise with the characters and the situation …

The novel is quite distinctive already in its original Spanish market, for its revelations about a situation that is largely unknown. It would suggest that the surprise would be even greater for an English-language audience, and particularly in Britain, and which would be a huge selling point for this novel. Literature and fiction about World War II is still in high demand, and interest would be piqued by an unknown factor such as this story. The very personal style of the narrative and the blending of family history with widely significant events also has an appeal that is global, and this story offers a perspective that will not have been seen before on a well-known and popular theme.

From the reader´s report by Suky Taylor.