ABSTRACT
The possible autobiographical elements in Carmen Laforet’s debut novel, Nada [Nada (nothing)], have become part of the lore surrounding the work. When Laforet rst submitted the manuscript to the inaugural contest of the Nadal prize in 1944 at the editorial house Destino during the extremely difcult early years after the Spanish Post-Civil War, the author had no premonition of the monumental critical and popular success the novel would go on to achieve. Her novel not only won the rst Nadal prize, it sent up a are in the dark night of Spain’s literary culture of the time and illuminated a pathway forward for other novelists during the Franco dictatorship, and Nada continues to inspire novelists even today. It was a novel that broke all the previous molds established up to that point, especially the novela rosa [romance novel], which was endemic to female authors during the Franco regime. Nada became a classic in the author’s lifetime selling at least 8,000 copies a year at the publishing house Destino from its rst edition in May 1945 to the present day. Despite all of the socio-cultural, intellectual, and artistic limitations during the Post-War in Spain, after the historic moment when Carmen Laforet won the rst Nadal Prize, she demonstrated that women in Spain were capable of writing, publishing, and promoting their voices after the War. The editorial success of Nada guaranteed Laforet a special position within the literary canon of the twentieth century.
