The Tomb in Seville: Crossing Spain on the Brink of Civil War by Norman Lewis

The Tomb in Seville: Crossing Spain on the Brink of Civil War Reviews

• 
  Daren

  I was interested to learn that this was the last book Norman Lewis wrote, and that it reprises the first book that he wrote (in part). It tells of a trip he took to Spain in 1934 with his brother-in-law Eugene Corvaja, as the request of his father-in-law. The purpose of the trip was to visit the family tomb, in Seville.
  
  As many will know, 1934 was just prior to the kicking off of the Spanish Civil war and at this time there was a communist uprising, which it transpired was much more a series of rumours and exaggeration than an actual uprising, although there was a brief and violent series of events which curtailed their journey for a period of time in Madrid. Nevertheless these were uncertain times to be travelling in Spain, and with the State of Alarm and travel restrictions their journey commencing in San Sebastian, in the north-west near the French border to Madrid, before heading further east to Salamanca and then into Portugal in order to travel south and return back into Spain and to Seville.
  Upon reaching Seville, there are things to discover about the Corvaja Palace (so called) and the family tomb.
  
  Spanish Adventure was Lewis' first publication, and covers the travel in Spain which The Tomb in Seville explains, but also France (before) and North Africa (after). It was not a popular book, as can bee seen by GRs two ratings, and no reviews. Lewis obviously felt he could do better with this reprise, and at 95 years old he wrote this (posthumously published). There are some interesting interactions with Eugene - who is committed to communism, is card-carrying and outspoken, and Lewis who is ambivalent and quietly attempts to encourage Eugene to consider his longer term prospects if he holds this position.
  
  Lewis also impressed me with his willingness to carry on with this journey when it had obviously become dangerous, ducking in the train to avoid bullets, the trouble in Madrid, illegal border crossings and yet persisted in attending a bull fight and other tourist activities.
  
  Written in great detail I expect Lewis either replicated the detail from his earlier book or worked from diaries, as the description is detailed and vivid. This is a shot book - only 150 pages - so is a short read, and for anyone with a passing interest, highly recommended.
  
  4.5 stars, rounded down.
• 
  Mike Robbins

  I have heard Norman Lewis referred to as the first really modern travel writer, but I wonder if that is true. Whether or not he was the first, however, the sheer volume and quality of Lewis’s work do mark him out. The Tomb in Seville was his last book and was published posthumously in the autumn of 2003; he had died several months earlier at the age of 95.
  
  Lewis was born in 1908, in London, but to Welsh parents. Both were ardent spiritualists, and his upbringing (described vividly in his first volume of autobiography, Jackdaw Cake), was strange. As a young man he pursued various ventures, including the motor trade and motor racing, and was married, quite young, to the daughter of a Sicilian of noble Spanish descent, Ernesto Corvaja.
  
  In September 1934, Corvaja sent Lewis on a mission to Seville in search of the Corvaja ancestral tomb, which he hoped would be found in the cathedral. His son, Eugene Corvaja, travelled with Lewis. The Tomb in Seville is the account of their journey.
  
  There are some very odd things about this book, not least that it appeared not just posthumously but nearly 70 years after the journey it described. At the time, at least one critic expressed wonder that Lewis should still be writing so well in his 90s, but one wonders if this book was actually written much earlier. It may be that Lewis intended it as part of Jackdaw Cake, published nearly 20 years before - but then held it back for some reason, so that it remained unfinished business for decades. Certainly it has the air of something written much sooner after the event than 70 years.
  
  Equally odd was the timing of their journey. Spain was politically very tense - so much so that October 1934 saw a brief civil war in Spain; it ended quickly, but was a savagely violent interlude, the precursor to the larger conflict that was to follow less than two years later. At one point, Lewis and the younger Corvaja have to secure a place on an armoured train that takes them to Madrid. Here they alight to find themselves in the middle of a firefight, and as they dodge bullets to leave the station, Lewis notices a poster that assures them, in English, that “Spain Attracts and Holds You. Under the Blue Skies of Spain Cares Are Forgotten.”
  
  The book is packed with bizarre incident. As the fighting comes to an end, Lewis and Eugene Corvaja attend a bullfight, and see the rejoneador­ (a lead bullfighter who fights with a lance) apparently gored to death (“it was given out that he was dead”. In fact he was not, although Lewis does not mention this). They then decide to investigate a reported mania amongst Madrileños for drinking animal blood. They visit a slaughterhouse, but are “deterred by a woman on her way out, made terrible by the smile painted by the blood on her lips.” Later, on their way through Portugal, the pair hear of a witch-burning, no less, in a small village in Porto called Marco do Canavezes. They travel there to find that the story is substantially true.
  
  The book sometimes raises questions it does not answer. Why would Corvaja senior send his son and his son-in-law on a quixotic journey through Spain in a time of trouble? Did they really hear of a witch-burning in Portugal? (Marco do Canavezes - actually Canaveses - is real enough, and is, oddly, the birthplace of the singer Carmen Miranda; but I can find no mention of the witch-burning story although that does not make it false.)
  
  But does that matter? Why strain at a story of witch-burning in 1934, when a much larger outbreak of atavistic savagery was just beginning? For the most part, the narrative seems heartfelt; the journey clearly left an impression on Lewis and, like Laurie Lee a few months later, he was struck by the poverty (in Andalusia, they “pass through settlements of windowless huts consisting of no more than holes dug in the ground with branch and straw coverings …to take the place of roofs”).
  
  The book is also alive with Lewis's descriptive genius. Thus he and Corvaja, stranded by the conflict, must walk from city to city through the countryside:
  
  …the rich gilding of summer returned to the Navarran landscape. …We moved across boundless plains of billowing rock purged of all colour by the sun. ...Behind the mountains ahead symmetrical and luminous clouds were poised without shift of position as we trudged towards them for hours on end. At our approach an anomalous yellow bloom shook itself from a single tree, transformed into a flock of singing green finches. Lizards, basking in the dust, came suddenly to life and streaked away into the undergrowth.
  
  Therein lies this book’s great strength. It is intensely vivid. To be sure, the book's genesis is odd, and the circumstances of the journey mysterious; but it doesn't matter, for this is one of the best travel books of all time. Beautifully observed and written, it is like a trip through a wormhole - an almost covert glimpse of a world that has been forgotten. It is not perfect, but it does not have to be, for it has the freshness and warmth of a diary entry.
• 
  César Lasso

  This is a very entertaining book. Norman Lewis, an English traveler and journalist, describes his visit to Spain in 1934. To me, that is doubly motivating – on the one hand, you read travel literature and, on the other, the descriptions are referred to a world that no longer exists. Actually, the destination of the author’s adventure across the Iberian Peninsula (Spain + Portugal) was Seville, and my father was born there one year after the author’s visit.
  
  There’s something I should mention about this work. Lewis initially wrote another account of that journey in 1935 (Spanish Adventure) where he also commented his stay in Southern France and Morocco. But, for some reason, he later on disowned that book. The version I have read was written at the end of his long life (95) and published the same year he died. Although the author draws on his travel notes, the old man had mixed in his memory his own experience with what he later on learnt about the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). It is true that he visited Spain in a turbulent year presaging the impending war. There was a rebellion of miners in the North (Asturias) and Catalonia briefly declared its independence. But the street fights Lewis describes in Madrid seem anachronistic and reminding too intensely the brushes that actually took place in the capital at the beginning of the war. Another lapse I caught is that he mentions Franco in 1934 and says the newspapers were already calling him the “Caudillo” (Spanish equivalent of German “Führer”). That is absolutely inexact. Franco actually kept a very low profile until the military rebellion had already started, and only took the lead after the major favorites (his rivals) disappeared of the scene. That is when the media began to call him “Caudillo”.
  
  Nevertheless, the book is interesting for its descriptions, sometimes accompanied by very funny comments. For instance, after a combat in Madrid whence a butcher’s shop window was riddled with shots, the author says the pork pieces hanging from hooks had been inflicted with “posthumous wounds”.
  
  The travel account will also be of interest for the Portuguese. The author had hoped to travel from Salamanca to Seville, but the Spanish situation was chaotic, so he was advised to go to Porto and, from there, travel South (Coimbra, Lisbon, Alentejo and Vila Real de Santo António) before illegally crossing the frontier again and finally arriving in Seville. And his impressions of that poor Portugal of the 1930s were very positive. Some shocked me or made me laugh… so much, that I will avoid spoilers and let you find for yourself.
• 
  John

  Well-presented observations of Spain on the brink of Civil War by a disinterested observer.
• 
  Simon Hollway

  Those expecting an elegiac swansong from Lewis' last book, should stop at the border, retrace their steps and visit the Cowardesque stylings and deliciously arch wit of A Dragon Apparent. Lewis penned Tomb in Seville at the grand old age of 95 and, sadly, it's more a brief, last gasp than a show-stopping monologue.
  
  A pleasant, if insubstantial read, that spasmodically relives being caught up in the first few intermittent days of the Spanish Civil War but goes no further than describing a few bullet holes glanced at by a disaffected traveller. Lewis' sputtering act of nostalgia is not enough to spark the requisite amount of charge that animates his previous, superlative prose.
• 
  Joe

  Not bad travel writing. I liked the descriptions of the countryside both of places I had and had not experienced myself. The inclusion of these pastoral snapshots interspersed among the attitudes and actions pertaining to the build up of the Spanish Civil War blended nicely for a nice, leisurely read. It might flow too slowly for some, though.
• 
  Steve

  The Tomb in Seville, is a real literary treat. Norman Lewis has a precise eye, the kind that reminds you of Hemingway's impressive In Our Time vignettes. Like Hemingway, Lewis couples finely drawn (and pregnant) images and events to a clear and understated prose. Such a combination recalls the best efforts of Rebecca West, Graham Greene and, going back, Turgenyev. To some extent I found The Tomb in Seville superior to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, though the comparison is somewhat uneven. I think, looking back, we now view Orwell's effort as part of his indictment of Communism. Lewis' effort, which precedes the events of Orwell's book, is more limited in scope (and better written).
  
  Mention is made in the Introduction of this being Lewis' final book. But mention is also made of an earlier Spanish effort. Considering the slightness of the book, I have to wonder if Seville is more or less notes and outtakes of that previous effort. If so, these are quality notes and outtakes, and further testament to a fine writer.
  
• 
  Danielle McClellan

  I loved this memoir of crossing into Spain at the moment that the Civil war was beginning. Apparently this was Lewis's last book, and it retraced the events of his journey over seventy years later. Clearly, Lewis worked from excellent notes because this memoir is vivid and immediate. Lewis has a wry sense of humor and creates the world of Spain with beautifully honed details.
• 
  Jeanette (Ms. Feisty)

  I'm now officially nuts for Norman. I love this guy's style and brevity. Things slumped a bit near the end of the journey, but it was so fascinating to read about how they found themselves in Madrid just as the revolution was starting. And scary, too!
• 
  Tim Weed

  A wonderfully written travelogue of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Lewis' descriptive powers are second to no travel writer I've read, and the story is leavened with a dry and self-deprecating sense of humor. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Spain and/or travel writing.
• 
  Les Dangerfield

  A fairly short account of a journey to Seville Norman Lewis made in the 1930s during the early rumblings of the Spanish civil war, which put such obstacles in his way that he had to make a substantial detour through Portugal. The book is an interesting insight into social and economic conditions in both Spain and Portugal at this time and also about the confusion of the early days of civil conflict in Spain. The quest to find a friend’s family tomb in Seville cathedral gives the journey a purpose but is otherwise not very interesting in itself. The book was his last published travel book but I can only think that the level of some of the detail must mean that he based it on notes written at the time.
• 
  Jim

  The first book I read by Norman Lewis was Naples ‘44. I would recommend that book to anyone. It had a sense of time and place that was compelling. A Tomb in Seville was interesting but at times tedious. Obviously we are looking at a Spain that no longer exists but also a world that dis exist and holds a lesson for us today. This lead up to the Spanish civil war is a glimpse at forces that helped shape our modern world.
• 
  Shane Wasylow

  Ładny język i nudna, nawet dobrze niezaakcentowana historia wyjazdu w poszukiwaniu korzeni. Miało być o Hiszpanii i początkach wojny domowej - było, ale za mało. Trochę nie wiem jak traktować tę książkę, bo czytała się bardziej jak opowiadanie.
• 
  Chris Thomas

  I discovered Norman Lewis’s travel writing purely by accident. Set almost 100 years ago, the pictures and people he describes are truly from another age, in many cases seemingly 2 or 300 years earlier, such was the situation in Spain and Portugal then. Well worth getting to know this author!
• 
  Megan

  I selected this for the "read a travel memoir" prompt for the 2017 BookRiot Read Harder challenge. I'd originally planned to read another book, but came across this one while wandering through the travel section in my library. In 1934, acclaimed travel writer Norman Lewis and his brother-in-law traveled across Spain, which was on the eve of a bloody civil war. The two attempted to get to Seville to find his brother-in-law's family tomb, but their travel was complicated by the internal strife. Despite the grim times, Lewis offers humorous and insightful observations about the country and its people. Published in 2003, this was the last book Lewis wrote prior to his death. His observations and wit were evident throughout and provided a unique glimpse into a country on the brink of war. I enjoyed the historical aspect of the journey and Lewis's writing style.
• 
  Juan Hidalgo

  Interesante y muy ameno libro que ofrece una visión de España en los preámbulos de la guerra civil de 1936. Para viajeros y autores como Norman Lewis, en aquella época, visitar este país debía ser como trasladarse a lugares mucho más lejanos y remotos dadas las condiciones de vida en aquel entonces, aunque hay fragmentos y descripciones que parecen demasiado exóticos (bosques como junglas inexploradas, costumbres rurales bastante llamativas...)
  
  Esto podría deberse a una mala interpretación de los hechos por parte del autor, a una deficiente transmisión de la información por parte de los lugareños, o al tiempo transcurrido desde aquellas vivencias hasta el momento de escribir el libro (2003), lo cual me recuerda al maravilloso
  El tiempo de los regalos de Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, que es análogo en forma y época aunque mucho más refinado y emotivo.
  
  Entre las muchas curiosidades de "Una tumba en Sevilla" me llamó la atención, y me gustaría destacar, esa pasión y afán que los jóvenes europeos del primer tercio del siglo XX sentían por el conflicto bélico como actividad romántica, aventurera e idealista, y que aquí se pone de manifiesto en el enorme interés e ilusión del compañero de viaje de Lewis por unirse al bando republicano. Tal vez entonces los ideales eran más sinceros y profundos, o quizá hoy estamos mejor informados y se aprecia más la vida y la resolución pacífica de los conflictos.
  
  De cualquier modo es una mirada al pasado de España muy interesante y recomendable, y conectando con esto y como unos libros llevan a otros, para retroceder aún más (mucho mas) en la historia, se puede acudir a
  España y los españoles hace dos mil años. Según la geografía de Strábon, basado en una obra erudita de la antiguedad.
• 
  Diane

  First, an apology to this book. I was about 3/4 finished when I lost the book. It took over a month for it to resurface and I think the continuity of the story suffered.
  
  Two young men, Norman Lewis and his brother-in-law, Eugene Corvaja, travel across Spain. They say that their goal is to find the Corvaja ancestral tomb in Seville, but the trip is the true goal. Eugene is a naturalist and some of my favorite parts are when he enjoys looking at wildlife – I wish there were more of these and that the information was more detailed. Just as they come to the border of Spain the Civil War begins and the course of their journey changes. Eugene joins the Communist party and later returns to fight. Norman takes the newspaperman’s role. Trains no longer run as scheduled, parts of towns are taken over with protests and gunfights, accommodations are unaccommodating. Norman and Eugene end up walking about 100 miles through the countryside, where the Civil War is still distant, and then taking trains, carts, taxis and boats through Portugal and back to Spain. In Seville, the tombs are not what they seem.
  
  I wanted to like this book more than I did. Then I learned that Norman published his account of the trip 70 years after it happened. That explains a lot of the distance I felt in the writing. Still, it is better than many travel accounts and provides an unusual look at the beginning of the war.
  
• 
  David

  Not as enjoyable as Naples ’44 but it did help distract me as I took a multi-hour, weather-delayed bus trip from DC to NY on the day before Thanksgiving. It is as well-written as the Naples book, but his experience here simply isn’t as compelling.
  
  A quotation (Kindle location 575):
  
  

  Setting out from the hotel, we are anxious not to surrender to an overdramatisation of the events, covering the first few hundred yards as if enjoying a leisurely morning stroll. We were converted by the sight of a well-dressed citizen lying in the gutter with something like red jelly spread over his chest at the opening of his shirt. Turning a corner moments later, we faced a machine-gun pointing vaguely at our stomachs and were halted by the threatening yell of the gunner.

  
  
  Well, I’m glad that Lewis’s desire to show how unflappable he is didn’t cause him and his companion to end up an anonymous bloody mess on a street in Madrid.
  
  Your opinion of this book may depend on whether you find people needlessly placing themselves in harm’s way interesting or exasperating.
• 
  Cathryn

  I was curious what Spain was like on the brink of the Civil War that culminates in Franco's fascist regime, and this book provides an unsuspected glimpse of that time in the tale of two undaunted travelers on a mission to find a family crypt on the great cathedral in Seville. They encounter the early spasms of the civil war and must take slow detours or endure delays in sleepy towns or cross over into Portugal when the the trains shut down intermittently (or the borders close). It is fascinating to read about haphazard fighting in the streets of Madrid, as the hotel proprietors and show owners have their windows strafed and their customers occasionally killed. It is shocking to read about the dire poverty in rural Spain and, even worse, Portugal, as if they were not part of Europe. that helps explains the backwardsness of Spain after Franco's death decades later. The author describes the country, sights and people in the course of telling his tale, so the 'travel writing' seems natural and organic. His humor is understate, and funnier if you imagine him, a Brit, speaking.
• 
  Mike

  As much as I enjoyed this narrative recalling the author's travels through Spain at the beginning of the civil war, I'm not so sure that it holds up for anyone who has not already constructed some sort of personal fantasy of Spain.
  
  I've longed to recreate, at least, the hike between Pamplona and Zaragoza that Lewis describes. The relationship between the author and his travelling companion is interesting... I wish this were a piece of fiction so that he might have pursued that theme further.
• 
  Chris

  I think I read this book in 2003 when it was released. After reading it I'm still not sure if I ever read it. It's pretty unremarkable. I still don't get the fascination with Lewis as a great travel writer. There are some pithy comments but his writing doesn't bridge the decades or the cultural chasm of English society. I'd read his book about wartime Naples and was just as unimpressed. At least this was mercifully short.
• 
  Jim Angstadt

  I loved Naples '44 by Norman Lewis.
  
  This book, by the same author, is very different.
  
  In Naples, Lewis described the Italian people and their situation, attitudes, needs, and trade-offs.
  
  In Tomb, Lewis describes his reaction to the people of Spain and Portugal.
  
  At first, that difference does not seem like much; but later, it seems like a lot.
  
  One gives us a feel for the people; the other gives us a feel for the viewer. What a difference!
  
• 
  Becky Mears

  I'm not good at reading non-fiction but I wanted to read a book set in Seville whilst on holiday in Seville and this was the one one to hand. I surprised myself b realy enjoying it but then it is written in a very novelistic way. It actually took the characters such a long time to get to Sevile that I was back in Malaga by the time they got there but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of this account of a 1930's apolitical Englishmans experience of travelling in Spain during the civil war.
• 
  Simone

  I read this book after visiting Spain this year and really wished that I had read it before. It is particularly interesting to read about Madrid during the civil war and about the poverty during Franco's reign.
• 
  Caroline

  Mediocre addition to the literature of Englishmen in Spain during the 30s. I don’t quite get other reviewers admiration for Lewis; I found the book detached, either really or disingenuously naive, and dull.
• 
  Flora

  Another lovely tale of early years in Spain. Takes place just before the Civil War breaks out.
• 
  Dunrie

  I read this quickly, staying up too late on a Sunday evening, gripped by the scene and location and moment in history. I admire the author's brevity in particular.
• 
  b bb bbbb bbbbbbbb

  Very solid, comfortable writing about the author's trip through Spain during the start of its civil war.
• 
  Allison

  Quick read and interesting. I'm now a fan of Norman Lewis!