The Truth Imagined: The Imposture of Enric Marco as Portrayed in Javier Cercas’ El impostor.

Abstract

In his El impostor, Javier Cercas, the prolific Spanish writer, sought to unmask Enric Marco, who had lived his public life as a holocaust survivor and anti-Franco crusader, as an imposter. Couched in epistemological (fiction vs reality) and moralistic (truth vs. falsehood) terms, Marco’s imposture is debated against the backdrop of Spain’s most recent history: the Civil war and its aftermath, the Franco dictatorship, the Transición and the fervor of the Memoria histórica. In this presentation, I will read El impostor in light of three questions: a) What is an imposture b) Is an imposture justified and justifiable, and c) Is a public imposture the sign of the times.