Miguel de Unamuno - Fiction

Fiction

Unamuno wrote the following books, in chronological order:

• Paz en la guerra (Peace in War) (1897) — a novel that explores the relationship of self and world through familiarity with death. It is based on his experiences as a child during the Carlist siege of Bilbao in the Third Carlist War.
• Amor y pedagogía (Love and Pedagogy) (1902) — a novel uniting comedy and tragedy in an absurd parody of positivist sociology.
• El espejo de la muerte (The Mirror of Death) (1913) — a collection of stories.

• Niebla (Mist) (1914) — one of Unamuno's key works, which he called a nivola to distinguish it from the supposedly fixed form of the novel ("novela" in Spanish).
• Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (usually translated into English as Our Lord Don Quixote) (1914) — another key work of Unamuno, often perceived one of the earliest works applying existential elements to Don Quixote. The book, on Unamuno's own admission, is of mixed genre with elements of personal essay, philosophy and fiction.
• Abel Sánchez (1917) — a novel that uses the story of Cain and Abel to explore envy.
• Tulio Montalbán (1920) — a short novel on the threat of a man's public image undoing his true personality, a problem familiar to the famous Unamuno.
• Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo (Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue) (1920) — a much-studied work with a famous prologue. The title deliberately recalls the famous novelas ejemplares of Miguel de Cervantes.
• La tía Tula (Aunt Tula) (1921) — his final large-scale novel, a work about maternity, a theme that he had already examined in Amor y pedagogía and Dos madres.
• Teresa (1924) — a narrative work that contains romantic poetry, achieving an ideal through the re-creation of the beloved.
• Cómo se hace una novela (How to Make a Novel) (1927) — the autopsy of an Unamuno novel.
• Don Sandalio, jugador de ajedrez (Don Sandalio, Chess Player) (1930).
• San Manuel Bueno, mártir (Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr) (1930) — a brief novella that synthesizes virtually all of Unamuno's thought. The novella centres on a heroic priest who has lost his faith in immortality, yet says nothing of his doubts to his parishioners, not wanting to disturb their faith, which he recognizes is a necessary support for their lives.