Jay Conrad (b. 1955)

-  Mirror City (The Left Panel of The Sombrayagua Diptych) – about Spain in the 20th century, seen from the year 2019 – will be published by Diagraph in autumn 2015.

- The Lens of Ibn Sahl (The Right Panel of The Sombrayagua Diptych) will be published by Diagraph in autumn 2016.

 

Later will follow in a steady pace:

- Blessings of the Iron Moor, an English 'novelita' about the imaginary, yet explosive meeting between Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare (ready).

- The Council of Cruelty, a medieval medical thriller with the Spanish-Arab philosopher and judge Muhammad ibn Rushd (aka Averroês) investigating (ready). 



RADIO PLAY

 -  The Black Watch Letters, a 45-minute English radio play (monologue) about the liberation (1945) of the northern Netherlands. A young Canadian officer writes letters to himself about the woman he loves, imagining her life, working in an Ontario steel plant. He fights with Canadian First Army in the Black Watch regiment and also describes how Gen. Harry Crerar's Canadians, Gen. Maczek's tank-Poles and Maj. Blondeel's Belgian commandos link with the Dutch Resistance in often hilarious, often tragic circumstances. Like Our Years of Dust and Hunger (see below), this radio play is mainly based on fact: that is why some of the events defy belief.

Soon to be submitted to the reading room of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), after final editing.

 

CINEMA

 - Our Years of Dust and Hunger, an English screenplay for a feature film about the Spanish socialist, Col. Segismundo Casado, an exiled Republican officer in Blitztime London, and a few thousand Republican soldiers, interned by Churchill in Lancashire, desperately trying to join the Allied cause. For no reason, the British feared that England would become a viper's nest where old Spanish-Republican accounts – between Casado's socialists and the communists of former PM Juan Negrín, equally in London – would be settled in bloodshed. Yet, Negrín and Casado, who had ousted the PM in March, 1939, coldly ignored each other: there was another war on now. It took Churchill a long time to realize the potential of the Spaniards, hardened by three years of civil war. So, in the end, the Lancashire Republicans did fight in the British Army – without Casado, however. Deeply frustrated, he landed himself a Spanish programme on the BBC. A fascinating – and too little-known – story about justified Spanish fury. The plot of this screenplay evolves the growing friendship between Casado (Col. Lacy in the story) and a young female officer of the exiled Belgian Air Force who is commissioned by the British to find out who the Spaniard really is. (work in progress)


 

 

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