A master chronicler of the African-American experience, Richard Wright brilliantly expanded his literary horizons with  Pagan Spain , originally published in 1957. An amalgam of expert travel reportage, dramatic monologue, and arresting sociological critique,  Pagan Spain  serves as a pointed and still-relevant commentary on the grave human dangers of oppression and governmental corruption. The Spain Richard Wright visited in the mid-twentieth century was not the romantic locale of song and story, but a place of tragic beauty and dangerous contradictions. The portrait he offers in Pagan Spain is a blistering, powerful, yet scrupulously honest depiction of a land and people in turmoil, caught in the strangling dual grip of cruel dictatorship and what Wright saw as an undercurrent of primitive faith.  "This is Richard Wright's Spain, which means that it is fascinating, intense, subjective, emotional." - New York Times Book Review "Controversial in the extreme, but [the author] presents a point of view with honesty." - San Francisco Chronicle “ Pagan Spain is a book which required courage to write—and even greater courage to publish.” - Christian Science Monitor A master chronicler of the African-American experience, Richard Wright brilliantly expanded his literary horizons with Pagan Spain , originally published in 1957. The Spain he visited in the mid-twentieth century was not the romantic locale of song and story, but a place of tragic beauty and dangerous contradictions. The portrait he offers is a blistering, powerful, yet scrupulously honest depiction of a land and people in turmoil, caught in the strangling dual grip of cruel dictatorship and what Wright saw as an undercurrent of primitive faith. An amalgam of expert travel reportage, dramatic monologue, and arresting sociological critique, Pagan Spain serves as a pointed and still-relevant commentary on the grave human dangers of oppression and governmental corruption. Born in 1908 near Roxie, Mississippi, Richard Wright won international renown for his powerful and visceral depictions of the Black experience. The author of numerous works, he stands today as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. Black Boy and his novel Native Son are required reading in many high schools and colleges across the nation. Wright died in 1960 in Paris, France.    Pagan Spain By Richard A. Wright HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2008 Richard A. Wright All right reserved. ISBN: 9780061450198 Life After Death In torrid August, 1954, I was under the blue skies of the Midi, just a few hours from the Spanish frontier. To my right stretched the flat, green fields of southern France; to my left lay a sweep of sand beyond which the Mediterranean heaved and sparkled. I was alone. I had no commitments. Seated in my car, I held the steering wheel in my hands. I wanted to go to Spain, but something was holding me back. The only thing that stood between me and a Spain that beckoned as much as it repelled was a state of mind. God knows, totalitarian governments and ways of life were no mysteries to me. I had been born under an absolutistic racist regime in Mississippi; I had lived and worked for twelve years under the political dictatorship of the Communist party of the United States; and I had spent a year of my life under the police terror of Per¢n in Buenos Aires. So why avoid the reality of life under Franco? What was I scared of? For almost a decade I had ignored the admonitions of my friends to visit Spain--the one country of the Western world about which, as though shunning the memory of a bad love affair, I did not want to exercise my mind. I had even resisted the solemn preachments of Gertrude Stein who, racked with pain and with only a few days to live, had counseled me (while nervously tugging with the fingers of her right hand at a tuft of hair on her forehead): "Dick, you ought to go to Spain." "Why?" I had asked her. "You'll see the past there. You'll see what the Western world is made of. Spain is primitive, but lovely. And the people! There are no people such as the Spanish anywhere. I've spent days in Spain that I'll never forget. See those bullfights, see that wonderful landscape. . . ." And still I had not gone. During the Spanish Civil War I had published, in no less than the New York Daily Worker, some harsh judgments concerning Franco; and the dive bombers and tanks of Hitler and Mussolini had brutally justified those judgments. The fate of Spain had hurt me, had haunted me; I had never been able to stifle a hunger to understand what had happened there and why. Yet I had no wish to resuscitate mocking recollections while roaming a land whose free men had been shut in concentration camps, or exiled, or slain. An uneasy question kept floating in my mind: How did one live after the death of the hope for freedom? Suddenly resolved, I swung my car southward, toward those humped and rag