Requiem por un campesino espanol, a short, elegant and moving account of the tragic effects of the Spanish Civil War on a small Aragonese population, is often called Ramon J. Sender"s greatest masterpiece. It was the author"s own favorite book and -in his own words- of all his novels it is "the simplest, and the most universal". This characteristic of "universality" flows through all Sender"s writings, while he manages to still be the most Spanish of the generation that began to write just before the onset of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. As a journalist who allied himself with the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, Sender (1901-82) was a privileged eyewitness to Spain"s struggle, suffering and defeat, a situation he continued to write about after he left Spain in 1938. While his texts are considered essential source material by historians of this era, at the same time, the anguish and pain, losses and victories of the profoundly Spanish characters are portrayed as...