Max Aub

Mexican-Spanish experimentalist novelist, playwright and literary critic, who founded the literary periodical Los Sesenta (the Sixties) in 1965, with editors that included the poets Jorge Guillén and Rafael Alberti.

Although Aub was the author of nearly 100 novels and plays and is very well known in Spain, only two works are available in English, Jusep Torres Campalans (Translated by Herbert Weinstock, Doubleday, 1962) and Field of Honour (Translated by Gerald Martin, Verso Press, 2009).

The centrepiece of his work is the impressive cycle of novels El laberinto mágico (The Magic Labyrinth) about the Spanish Civil War, written between 1943 and 1968: Campo Cerrado, translated into English as Field of Honour (1943), Campo abierto (1951), Campo de Sangre (1945), Campo del Moro (1963), Campo de los Almendros (1965) and Campo Frances (1968). The cycle also comprises another 25 short stories.

Aub died on 22 July 1972 in Mexico City, aged 69.