THE LATE Ronald Fraser, the founder of New Left Books which includes the Verso imprint, was a renowned and sympathetic writer on Spain and in particular the Spanish civil war.

In what is an obviously autobiographical novel, Drought is set in a remote Andalusian hillside village in 1957, two decades after the defeat of the republican government and its replacement by Franco’s smothering tyranny. 

Through the eyes of John Black — a very Fraseresque character — it tells of the unforeseen impact of efforts to build a new dam, the pet project of a local thrusting and monomaniac expat Englishman.

Its closely and minutely observed accounts of the sufferings and indignities of the largely impoverished community of sharecroppers, especially the seemingly impenetrable Miguel, is mirrored in the worsening drought.

There are echoes of both Ernest Hemingway and Lawrence Durrell in Fraser’s book, yet the closest literary equivalent is probably Ilya Ehrenburg’s The Thaw.

While Drought is certainly the very particular story of Miguel — who commits suicide in despair at the thwarting of his hopes for respectability through both the acquisition of land and a wife — it is also an extended metaphor for a Spain in the midst of an uneasy and unstable transition.

The drought of the arid, cruel and repressive clericalism and landlordism of Francoist social structures are beginning to crack and fissure in the face of an increasingly globalised capitalism that is threatening many while offering opportunities of enrichment for the few.

John himself, by dint of his mere presence in the village, is a confusing and confused harbinger of change and destruction which affects the lives of Miguel and his sister Ana along with Juana, his betrothed.

The latter third of the book sees John’s literary re-imagining of Miguel’s life from the time of his youth in the civil war, where he sees his family split between an idealistic brother and a conservative, calculating father. 

His later experiences as a shepherd in the hills where he encounters bandits — many of whom are ex-republican soldiers — confirms the need for personal economic independence in Miguel’s mind.

That ambition is thwarted because not only does he have to give half his yearly crop to the ghastly landowner Maria Burgos but she also refuses to allow a watercourse from a dam to cross her land and hence irrigate his dying crops. 

His aspirations are unachievable, either under Francoism or capitalism.

The cataclysmic ending suggests that it is not only Miguel but many others who will continue to mourn the lost dreams of the 1936-39 republic and continue to suffer the depredations of the ruling classes.

Review by Paul Simon