Álvaro Retana, who proclaimed himself the "handsomest writer in the world," always knew that what mattered was that people talked about you, especially if it was negatively. A master of the ironic and frivolous pen, homoeroticism, and farce, he was one of the great Spanish writers of the first half of the 20th century, fallen into oblivion over the years. An unforgivable injustice that this new edition of Las «locas» de postín and El fuego de Lesbos, for the first time in a single volume, aims to correct.
With its balanced doses of humor and lightheartedness, Retana’s novels were very well received in the twenties and thirties, depicting a Spain breathing the modern airs coming from other European countries. The protagonists of these comedies of errors — whose names mostly concealed real people from the author’s circle — were decadent aesthetes, bawdy artists, gallant writers, and above all, libertine aristocrats who tested the prevailing moral codes. A mirage of freedom that would vanish with the outbreak of the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.
Las «locas» de postín and El fuego de Lesbos are two novels that portray with firsthand knowledge the gay, lesbian, and bisexual scene during the Roaring Twenties. Both works present a succession of outrageous scenes where the most diverse ambassadors of the third sex roam freely, transformists who cause a sensation in Madrid theaters, and marchionesses deceived by their girlfriends and lovers; characters who are forerunners of the camp and festive aesthetic of authors like Eduardo Mendicutti or Luis Antonio de Villena and filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar. As Dimas Prychyslyy concludes in the foreword to this edition, “every legend deserves to be adorned. Retana, without a doubt, has been one for a long time.”
About Álvaro Retana
Álvaro Retana (1890-1970) was the son of politician, diplomat, and writer Wenceslao Retana and Adela Ramírez de Arellano. He is considered the best author of erotic novels from the early 20th century. He was also a journalist, fashion designer, illustrator, costume designer, and cuplé lyricist, as well as a scholar of popular genres and an innovator of Spanish stage design. Lighthearted and frivolous, in his more than sixty novels you can find most of the sexual “transgressions” of the time, such as sadomasochistic, homosexual, and bisexual relationships, threesomes, or quartets. During Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, and after the persecution of erotic writers, he was prosecuted and imprisoned. He stayed in Madrid during the Civil War, where he continued his literary career and collaborations in the entertainment world. He was sentenced to death in 1939, although the sentence was commuted and he was released in 1948. He never wrote erotic novels again nor saw his designs on stage. Until the end of his days, he fought against censorship and social conventions.
