The red leaf
The red sheet (original title: La hoja roja ) is a novel by the Spanish author Miguel Delibes , published in 1959 and translated into German as early as 1961.
action
Miguel Delibes tells his story as a psychosocial study. The aging civil servant Don Eloy, who previously served in a provincial town with the street cleaning authority, is retiring after more than 50 years. He sees this retirement as the antechamber of death . A symbol of this feeling is his expression that he has now reached the red sheet , which in Spain indicates the end of the cigarette paper supply.
From now on his monotonous life becomes even more colorless. The old man feels uncomfortable in his son's family and is misunderstood by his former colleagues. Only the clumsy maid Desi provides a bit of variety in the dreary everyday life of the pensioner due to her simple, open manner.
expenditure
- Miguel Delibes: The red leaf . From the Spanish by Annelies von Benda, Piper, Munich 1988, 236 pp., ISBN 978-3492107938
Reviews
- Stephan Ozsváth: Miguel Delibes: The red sheet, in: Tranvía, vol. 10, p. 37.