Catholic University of America Press to publish a key 19th Century Spanish novel

Juan Valera’s The Illusions of Doctor Faustino (Las illusions del doctor Faustino) came out in 1875, and was considered to be one of the most important novels of its time in Spain. It was favorably compared to Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education (L’Education sentimentale) because of the negative affect of Romanticism on Faustino’s life. Valera had written a blockbuster the year before, Pepita Jiménez, and that book clearly established Valera as a writer of brilliant prose. This previous book deals realistically with the struggle between love and religion in an ardent young man who is studying for the priesthood, and who falls desperately in love with the title character, who is supposed to marry his widowed father. Valera takes it one step further with Doctor Faustino’s character, who seems to be unlucky in love at every turn, through no fault of his own. His love life is a series of nonstarters and missed opportunities, as he either scorns or is scorned by three different women in the course of his life. The story starts out in Andalusia, in Southern Spain, and then moves on to Madrid, where the denouement takes place and Faustino meets his sad end in a Romantic malaise.

This edition is deftly translated by Robert M. Fedorchek, a professor emeritus of Spanish at Fairfield University., with an introduction by Agnes Money, a professor of Spanish at Temple University. Fedorchek is a veteran translator, and he previously translated another Valera book for CUA Press in 2006, Juanita la Larga. According to an expert, Harriet S. Turner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “Fedorchek’s translation of Juanita la Larga captures the light, sinuous line of the original Spanish. In a masterly series of sleights of hand—transpositions, pauses, and ellipses—Fedorchek informs his translation with the wit, delicacy, and playfulness of Valera’s novel." It is evident that Fedorcheck does the same thing with The Illusions of Doctor Faustino, and allows English readers a rare opportunity to encounter a classic Spanish-language work.