El mapa del creador
In this stunning first novel by Emilio Calderón, we enter the dark period surrounding the rise and fall of Fascism through the eyes of a Spanish architect in Rome who -- together with a passionate young librarian and an Italian prince – becomes entangled in a web of political intrigue, love and deceit involving a fateful map whose secrets have the power to destroy them.
In October 1952 in Rome, the architect José Maria Hurtado and his wife Montserrat learn from the newspapers that their former friend -- Prince Junio Vivarini, the Italian Fascist and Nazi sympathizer -- has been found dead, decapitated in the Swiss Alps. At Montserrat’s last meeting with the prince two years earlier, he had informed her that, should he be killed, she and her husband would receive certain important documents containing secrets he was not yet prepared to reveal to them for their own personal safety.
Their relationship to the prince dates back some 15 years earlier, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Montserrat’s parents take refuge with her in the Spanish Academy in Rome, where Hurtado is finishing his studies. Originally the guest of the now discredited Republican director, who has recently been replaced by his secretary, a Franco sympathizer, Hurtado is spared because he has come to Rome to study Fascist architecture. Of no particular political persuasion, Hurtado is concerned solely in furthering his career and, at the same time, pursuing his amorous interest in Montserrat Fábregas, the twenty-year-old daughter of wealthy pro-Franco aristocrats who had fled Barcelona. Montse, however, has kept quietly to herself, working mostly in the academy library, which houses a vast collection of works including Spanish literary classics, history and the arts, as well as rarer volumes left behind by the monks whose monastery predated the academy.
As the winter grows colder and rationing sets in, the secretary of the academy begins to sell off the library’s collection in order to secure food and fuel. Montse and Hurtado are chosen to approach an antiquarian book dealer: Montse is asked to select the books to be sold; Hurtado, to negotiate prices. Among the books offered, one volume in particular arouses the special attention of the antiquarian Tasso, whose bookstore lies across the Tiber near the Sisto Bridge: a 1556 edition of Hieroglyphics, or a Commentary on the Sacred Writings of the Egyptians and Other Ancient Peoples by Pierus Valerianus. He offers to find a buyer for this extremely rare volume, and to purchase the remaining texts directly.
The buyer turns out to be Prince Junio, whose interest lies particularly in the portion of the text referring to the Creator’s Map. Said to be of divine origin, this map has obsessed esoteric historians and believers for centuries, none more than the chief of the Nazi SS, Heinrich Himmler. And since Himmler is due to accompany Hitler on his upcoming visit to Mussolini in Rome, the prince wishes to purchase the book as a gift for him. The prince also mentions that the famous map is rumored to be in the collection of the Vatican.
Montse seems fascinated not only by Prince Junio’s charm and culture, but by his ideas concerning Fascism and the strange esoteric beliefs of Himmler. As the two become friends, Hurtado grows suspicious of the prince and his ideas, but cannot separate his growing antipathy from his own jealousy of the prince’s relationship with Montse.
In the meantime, he is enlisted by a British spy named Smith to keep an eye on Prince Junio and report back on him. At first Hurtado obliges, more out of envy of the prince than out of any political idealism, but when Smith is found dead at their customary meeting place in a Roman cemetery, Hurtado begins to understand that the prince’s quest for the Creator’s Map is somehow linked to Smith’s death. He realizes as well the dangers inherent in his own spying for the British, which may jeopardize Montse’s safety as much as his own, given the lengths to which the prince seems prepared to go in order to obtain the map. A few days later, Hurtado’s suspicions take a dire turn when he learns not only that the map exists, but that it has just been stolen by an archivist from the Vatican. That same day, the archivist is found murdered.
As a result of the information Hurtado gathers from Smith’s replacement, and from the priest in charge of the Vatican’s investigation of the case, he is finally able to convince Montse of the true nature of the prince’s activities on behalf of Mussolini and Himmler. Montse agrees to become a spy and the two become lovers. Ironically, as a result of the prince’s influence, Hurtado begins to get work as an architect for the Fascists, designing trenches and fortifications for the defense of Italy, the plans of which he delivers to his British contact. And furthering the irony, it seems that the more Junio does for Hurtado, the more Montse grows to hate the prince. Eventually, as Mussolini and Hitler’s fortunes decline Hurtado is transferred to Berlin, to prepare that city’s aerial defenses, while Montse continues her work for the Italian partisans. Upon his return to Rome, however, Hurtado is unmasked by the SS as a spy, and now Montse and he will need the prince’s help to survive.
Set in Rome during the tumultuous period of the 1930s and 1940s, from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War until the end of World War II, this fascinating novel, like Suite Française, brilliantly recreates the dark intrigue, romantic entanglements, and divided loyalties of a war-torn Europe, whose complicated, sinister repercussions will play out in the post-war lives of its characters.
Rights already sold to: Penguin (USA & Canada); John Murray Publishers (UK); Text Publishing (Australia); Ullstein (Germany); Cairo Editore (Italy); Mouria (The Netherlands); Ascheoug (Norway); Muza (Poland); Bertrand (Portugal): Shangai 99 (China – Simplified Chinese Characters); Lindthard og Reinhof (Denmark); Companhia das Letras (Brazil); AST (Russia); Keter Books (Israel); Avro-Giunti (Serbia), Bookstory (Korea) and Crown Publishing (China – Complex Chinese Characters).