Locura y Muerte de Nadie

Between wars (1918-1939) Benjamin Jarnes (1888-1949) was considered among the most appreciated Spanish writers, and his novels were distinguished by the European critiques of the time. "Locura y muerte de Nadie", along "Paula y Paulita", "Escenas junto a la muerte" and "Teoria del zumbel", belong to a fiction cycle, unique in the peninsular narrative of those years; novels in which Jarnes experiments with the new forms of metafiction to highlight the existential condition of the human being in the newly technified mass society. "Locura y muerte de Nadie", simultaneously "agonic" and "carnivalesque" fiction, was written -in its first version- on the verge of the great depression (1929), and its second version dates from the Spanish civil war (1937). In his novel Jarnes sets his focus on the main role, a "nobody", and the mass characteristics individuals display in our society. But also, with the female character, Matilde, Jarnes explores the individualistic characteristics that may...