In this thoughtful and compelling book, leading Spanish literature scholar Noël Valis re-examines the role of Catholicism in the modern Spanish novel. While other studies of fiction and faith have focused largely on religious themes, Sacred Realism views the religious impulse as a crisis of modernity: a fundamental catalyst in the creative and moral development of Spanish narrative.

"“[Valis] here produces her magnum opus (to date)...[She] persuasively exposes levels of imagination and belief that are common to religion and to art in general and to the realist novel in particular.”—Patrick Madigan, Heythrop Journal" - Heythrop Journal

"The book is so well documented, the analysis so convincing, that when we finish reading it, we have the false certainty that we have always known about sacred realism. But we have not, and this is Valis’s and Sacred Realism’s great success."—Elisa Marti-Lopez, Hispanic Review - Hispanic Review

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“A remarkable book that challenges the prevailing view of religion as a spent force that has withered away in the age of modernity and the secular novel. . . . Compelling.”—Linda M. Willem, Anales Galdosianos