Memoirs of a Peasant Boy

Book excerpt: Balbino,"a boy from a village", a "nobody" who writes a notebook about everything that happens to him within the repressed and stifling society of Galicia in the thirties and forties. He tells of the moral and social atmosphere that prevails asking and answering questions and details the most elemental social struggle. There is also however the story of a true but impossible love. This book was first printed in Argentina in 1961 and became one of the most successful Galician books published. It has a lyrical style that immediately evokes sights and sounds of this part of Spain. The author Xos Neira Vilas writes from his experiences of the era and the lifestyle of boys growing up in that society and provides a rich insight to life of the peasant boy "Balbino".