Moving novel of Spanish Civil War wins 'Independent' fiction prize

A globally acclaimed novel about the myths and memories of the Spanish Civil War has won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction prize.

A globally acclaimed novel about the myths and memories of the Spanish Civil War has won this year's Independent Foreign Fiction prize.

Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercaswas announced as the winner of the £10,000 award at a ceremony last night at the Royal Festival Hall in London. The prize, supported by The Independent, Arts Council England and Champagne Taittinger, is divided equally between Cercas and his English translator, Anne McLean.

Soldiers of Salamis (published by Bloomsbury) is a moving but high-spirited novel of war, memory and forgetting, and a quest for the real meaning of courage and heroism. It tells the story of a young writer in modern Spain who accidentally stumbles across a strange "true tale" from the end of the civil war in 1939. The narrator, called "Javier Cercas" but very much a fictional creation, discovers that one of Franco's tame intellectuals, a vain and pompous aesthete, escaped from a Republican firing squad in the forests outside Barcelona thanks to a mysterious act of mercy by an unknown militiaman.

The novel traces the history of this lucky Francoist crony, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, who really existed. Then, in a coda set in the present day, it goes in search of the very different kind of warrior who saved him from certain death. With a consistently light touch, and flashes of humour even in its darkest moments, Soldiers of Salamis reflects both on the lingering tragedy of Spain's civil war and the filtration of its actual events through memory and propaganda in later times.

The novel has sold more than 500,000 copies around the world. A film version by David Truebagained a best-picture nomination for this year's Goyas, Spain's equivalent of the Oscars, and won the award for best cinematography.

Born in 1962, Javier Cercas is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Since 1989, he has lectured in Spanish literature at the University of Gerona in Catalonia. Also on the shortlist were Welcome to Paradise by Mahi Binebine (Granta); Q by Luther Blissett (Heinemann); Lizard Tails by Juan Marse (Harvill); Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia (Granta); and Mrs Sartoris by Elke Schmitter (Faber & Faber). The judges were Sian Williams, Marina Warner, Boyd Tonkin and George Szirtes.