Mist

A towering figure of political, philosophical, and literary controversy, Miguel de Unamuno was the undisputed intellectual leader of the brilliant Generation of 1898 that ushered in a second golden age of Spanish culture. In the vast and varied body of his work, none conveys his intellectual legacy more effectively than "Mist", a monument of the philosophical novel and a masterpiece of modern experimental fiction. Dispensing with the conventions of action, time and place, and analysis of character, "Mist" proceeds entirely on the strength of dialogue that reveals the struggles of what Unamuno called his "agonists". These include Augusto Perez, the pampered son of a recently deceased mother; the deceitful, scheming Eugenia, whom Augusto obsessively idealizes; and, Augusto's dog Orfeo, who gives a funeral oration upon his master's death. "Mist" even includes a chapter that explains Unamuno's theory of the antinovel. Anticipating later writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Unamuno exploited fiction as a vehicle for the exploration of philosophical themes. First published in 1914, "Mist" exemplified a new kind of novel with which Unamuno aimed to shatter fiction's conventional illusions of reality. It is an antinovel that treats its fictionality ironically. This historic reissue includes a foreword by Theodore Ziolkowski.