Chaos and Night

Don Celestino is old and bitter and afraid. In exile from his native Spain for more than twenty years, he lives with his daughter in Paris, but in his mind he is still fighting the Spanish Civil War. Don Celestino's daughter has had enough. She decides to return to Spain, and reluctantly, helplessly, he tags along. Now he foresees a last heroic confrontation with his enemies; he wonders whether he will be worthy. Instead he encounters a new commercialized Spain that has no time for the past, much less for him. Or so it seems. One of the great characters of twentieth-century fiction, a lost soul who is, in spite of everything, the essence of whatever honor may be, Don Celestino is an unparalleled modern reincarnation of the spirit of Don Quixote and a triumph of Henry de Montherlant's caustic and compassionate art.