The Death of Manolete

On Thursday, August 28, 1947, in the bull ring at the Spanish town of Linares, a thirty-year-old millionaire called Manolete (Manuel Laureano Rodriguez) and a Miura bull named Islero killed each other. Conrad recounts Manolete’s extraordinary life in The Death of Manolete, for the first time in English. He shows the breeding that made the Spanish boy, the tempering that made the young torero, the sacrifice that made the man, the girl who brought him love, the acclaim that brought him incredible success and finally its price...the undoing that began slowly and ended in one last great afternoon and in an untimely death that put out the brightest flame in Spain. Manolete fired the Latin imagination as no one had done since El Cid. He was a symbol of Latin pride, valor, and chivalry. But the crowds owned him and he did their bidding...and they had bid him to die.