Carmen Laforet (Barcelona 1921 - Madrid 2004) was one of Spain's most significant writers of the post-civil war period. Her debut novel Nada (1945) won the first Premio Nadal and remains her best-known work of fiction, but a primarily historical approach to reading Nada may have distorted our understanding of Laforet's writing. Wells argues that Laforet's five major novels need to be read as a collective meditation on the subject of relief. Laforet's novelistic output is therefore considered within a much broader framework than hitherto conceived. Wells discusses Laforet's concern with the complexities of human psychology and the deeper philosophical issues that her novels address. Each novel constitutes an aesthetic response to different modes of psychological suffering pertinent not only to Laforet's life but to the human condition in general. Caragh Wells is senior lecturer in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses primarily on post-war Spanish and Catalan fiction with particular emphasis on women's writing, feminist theory, psychoanalysis and the emotions.