The fact that his great uncle had been a Falange militant and a number of his family had been on the right of the political spectrum had always been a taboo subject for the Spanish writer Javier Cercas, until he spoke to David Trueba, who convinced Cercas to write El monarca de las sombras. This novel tells of the life and death of a young man who goes to war aged 17 and dies two years later. He will talk to Renato Cisneros about the process of writing and researching the book, as well as his doubts and concerns about how publication would affect his family and the writer himself.