Carmen Laforet

Laforet was born in Barcelona, Spain, but at the age of 2 she moved with her family to the Canary Islands where she spent her childhood.

[1] At age 12 she suffered the loss of her mother, and her father subsequently married a woman disliked by Laforet and her siblings (unsavory experiences portrayed in much of her literature).

Her friendship with fellow Spanish author and U.S. resident Ramón J. Sender was revealed in a series of letters published in 2003 entitled Puedo contar contigo.

The publication in 2003 of Puedo contar contigo, a selection of her correspondence with Ramón J. Sender edited by Israel Rolón Barada, and the reissue of her 1955 novel, La mujer nueva, with a prologue by the same editor, however, led to renewed interest in her work, bolstered by a new English translation of Nada by Edith Grossman in 2007.

Some streets in the towns of Las Palmas and San Bartolomé de Tirajana on the island of Gran Canaria were also named Carmen Laforet.

In 2014 The Instituto Cervantes in New York (United States) paid tribute to the author in one of its cultural activities to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the publication of her book Nada.

Later, in 1956, Argentina brought to the big screen what would be an adaptation of the novel Nada, a black and white drama directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson.

The main character of this work is Paulina, a woman who goes from criticizing the Church to practising the Catholic religion, a change she chooses on her own.

This could be due to the religious belief of the author, because in the correspondence that remained for a long time with writer Ramon J. Sender, she claims to believe in God.

Laforet's works paint a dark picture of Spanish society under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, in some cases using foreign characters visiting Spain to present an outsider's view, for example, Martin, a character of her work Al volver de la esquina, published posthumously by the publisher Destino in 2004, the same year as her death.

This is an unfinished trilogy because, despite having talked about it in her correspondence with Ramón J. Sender, she died before publication of the final volume (in fact, nobody knows whether or not it was actually written).