The career of Spain’s celebrated author Carmen Martin Gaite spanned the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship, and the nation’s transition to democracy. She wrote fiction, poetry, drama, screenplays for television and film, and books of literary and cultural analysis. The only person to win Spain’s National Prize for Literature (Premio Nacional de las Letras) twice, Martin Gaite explored and blended a range of genres, from social realism to the fantastic, as she took up issues of gender, class, economics, and aesthetics in a time of political upheaval.

Part 1 ( Materials ) of this volume provides resources for instructors and a literary-historical chronology. The essays in part 2 ( Approaches ) consider Martin Gaite’s bestknown novel, The Back Room (El cuarto de atras), and other works from various perspectives: narratological, feminist, sociocultural, stylistic. In an appendix, the volume editor, who was a friend of the author, provides a new translation of Martin Gaite’s only autobiographical sketch, alongside the original Spanish.