Abstract/Summary

This study focuses on the four books of memoirs by Esther Tusquets: Confesiones de una editora poco mentirosa (2005), Habíamos ganado la guerra (2007), Confesiones de una vieja dama indigna (2009), and Tiempos que fueron (2012). The initial premise of this research posits that, in recounting her personal experience, the author not only reveals intimate aspects of her self but also constructs a cultural narrative. To unravel the complexity inherent in this duality, we explore three areas fundamental to autobiographical writing: the configuration of identity through the narrative dimension of the text, the fictionality intrinsic to the genre, and the underlying testimonial intention of the author. The analysis shows that, although Tusquets writes these memoirs from a deeply subjective perspective, by contextualising them within a range of geographical, social, cultural, and political circumstances, she produces a dual cultural narrative. Thus, in the course of documenting the construction of Lumen’'s catalogue through a series of definitive milestones, she also furnishes a valuable testimony to what the publishing field in Spain was like between the late Franco era and the 1990s when the great international conglomerates began to erect insurmountable barriers to the work of independent publishers.