Toro! Toro!

As an old man telling a tale of childhood wrong-doing to his grandchild, Antonito recalls the days he spent working on his father's bull breeding farm in Andalucia. He falls in love with Paco, a bull calf that he has reared, and decides to liberate him, together with the whole herd, after learning that the magnificent creature is to be sent to face the horrors of the corrida. Meanwhile, Andalucia is invaded by Franco's fascists, and the liberated bull becomes a mythical emblem of the struggle for freedom. I found it difficult to accept the premise that a child reared on a bull farm could be ignorant of the animals' fate until he sees his first bull-fight, but apart from this reservation I found this book moving and exciting in its blend of almost pagan symbolism with harsh historical realities. The moral dilemma that Antonito faces is at the heart of the book, movingly linking his childhood and old age.