La Colmena

Set in Madrid in 1942, after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the novel deals with the poverty and general unhappiness found in Spain by examining a multitude of fictional characters in varying levels of detail. The book consists of six chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter contains a number of short passages describing short episodes and focusing on a particular character. In this way a series of insignificant events and characters work together to form an important conclusion, much in the same way that a hive of bees works together to achieve something much more than they could achieve individually.