In 1988, Maria Zambrano (1904-1991) became the first woman to win the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious award available to Spanish-language writers. She was the author of more than thirty books and was one of the most important disciples of Jose Ortega y Gasset. Carol Maier is Professor of Spanish at Kent State University. She has translated and edited many volumes, and the awards for her work include the Meritorious Achievement for Translation from the Kayden Translation Committee, the MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work, and the Outstanding Translation of the Year from American Literary Translators. Roberta Johnson is Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas and the author of four books, including Philosophy and the Novel in Spain: 1900-1934.

Written by one of twentieth-century Spain's most prominent intellectuals, this book--part memoir, part lyrical novel--is both a Bildungsroman about a young woman's intellectual formation during a crucial period of Spanish history (1929-1931) and a philosophical meditation upon the individual's place in society.