For the first time in Russian - the main sensation of Spanish literature of the new century. Alberto Mendez wrote only one book in his life and died the same year it was published, but “Blind Sunflowers” had the effect of a bomb exploding. The book received many awards (including the main one in Spain - the National Prize for Literature), became a bestseller, was translated into many languages (the American history of "Blind Sunflowers" began with publication in parts in the prestigious New Yorker magazine) and served as the basis the film of the same name, nominated for an Oscar by Spain. It seems to be a banality that in a civil war there are no winners, nevertheless Mendes talks about a total national defeat, at the level of human nature, at the level of the soul. The book consists of four stories, intertwined with exquisite finesse, and each of them is entitled: “First Defeat,” “Second Defeat,” and so on. And in these absolutely inhuman conditions, when they kill not for what you did, but for what you think, people continue to live and even love. Here, on the eve of victory, the captain of the Francoist army deserts and surrenders to the doomed Republicans, here a young poet flees to the mountains with his expectant lover, a prisoner cellist builds a multi-tiered edifice of lies for salvation only to bring it down, and a voluptuous deacon masks sinful lust. bloodthirsty calls for revenge...