Snippet: Paulina Pi de la Serra’s “Emma’s story”

Paulina Pi de la Serra, Història d’Emma [Emma’s story], 2018, 97 p.

publisher’s summary:

[The poet] Salvador Espriu defined her as “one of the few authentic values of our nation.” Paulina Pi de la Serra (1906-1991) is an author to be rediscovered. There has arrived the moment when her work, until know limited to the local sphere of Terrassa, can be known around the country.

Born in Terrassa in 1906 into a well-off, intellectual and Catalanist family, Paulina Pi de la Serra believed in her possibilities and knew how to make a place for herself in the Catalan culture world.

Història d’Emma is the only incursion that Paulina Pi de la Serra made into fiction: four short stories set in a cultured and cosmopolitan world at the time of the [Spanish Civil] war and postwar years. Written at different moments of her life, these stories were published together in 1982 by the Amics de les Arts i Joventuts Musicals de Terrassa [Terrassa friends of the arts and musical youth] club. Edicions del Núvol now recovers this shining volume.

Offered as a free e-book on the publisher’s page and available in print at bookstores.

Author information from the Wikipedia:

Paulina Pi de la Serra i Joly (Terrassa, 1906-1991) was a Catalan politician and cultural activist. Born into a well-off, intellectual, conservative and Catalanist family, at hardly more than 20 years of age she began her political activity. She became a very popular speaker and was called El rossinyol de la Lliga [The League’s (political party) nightingale]. During the Spanish Civil War she lived in Paris, where she worked different jobs (among them teacher and translator) and where she was interrogated by the Gestapo. In 1945 she returned to Terrassa to keep company to her father who was sick. Paulina Pi de la Serra worked as a highschool teacher of Catalan, French and other subjects. She wrote for newspapers, contributed to radio shows and held numerous speeches, becoming a cultural reference for the Anti-Franco resistance. In 1963 she promoted the creation of a UNESCO center in Terrassa. Paulina encouraged her nephew Quico Pi de la Serra to become a singer-songwriter.

Paulina had a secret daughter with the diplomat Joan Estelrich, both of them related to the Lliga Regionalista [regionalist league; political party]: Helena Feliu Pi de la Serra, who in 2012 published the novel Pecat original [Original sin], in which she unconvered the relationship and her story. Helena was born in Switzerland during a journey that Paulina camouflaged with a scholarship, and she was raised by a couple in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona.

 

SOURCE: Biblioteca del Núvol (publisher), Viquipèdia

Snippet: Pedro Bravo’s “Excess baggage” (nonfiction)

Pedro Bravo, Exceso de equipaje: Por qué el turismo es un gran invento hasta que deja de serlo [Excess baggage: why tourism is a great invention until it stops being such], 2018, 240 p.

publisher’s summary:

Suddenly, in the country that shows off as being the best tourist destination in the world, there has appeared a movement rejecting its most prosperous industry. Spaniards are traveling more and more but they also begin to see the defects hidden behind the other side of the picture postcard. What happened? Where does “turismofobia” come from? Didn’t we all agree that tourism was a profitable, nice and clean activity?

All over the world, not only in Spain, there have come up critical voices and there have been organized protests; the people reject seeing how their lives receive the impact of a business to which everythings seems to be permitted. A business that changes, grows and extends at full speed thanks to technology and to the contradictions of the territories that suffer from it without stopping to enhance it. Tourism generates jobs, but these are precarious and temporary. Tourism gives muscle to the macroeconomics but affects more and more the housing market. Tourism is a chance for people meeting each other, but it can turn into invasion. And yes, it is very contaminating.

How did we get here? Which are the sector’s keys? Which are its benefits? How much tourism is sufficient, and how much is too much? How does it affect us? Could it be done in a different way? Can one travel in another way? All of this is treated in Exceso de equipaje, something like a tourist guide for the tourism business.

A timely book for the summer tourist season. “Tourism” has already appeared a few times on this blog; there are older posts on tourism in Lisbon (2017, 2018) and Spain (2017).

SOURCE: Debate (PRH Spain; publisher)

Snippet: Rodrigo Murillo’s “Sentimental heroes”

Rodrigo Murillo, Los héroes sentimentales [The sentimental heroes], 2018, 304 p.

winner of the “I Premio Jose Ángel Mañas-Nuevos Talentos 2018″

publisher’s summary:

A mysterious ambush in the Andes mountains, a rich family divided by political violence and the guerrilla, and a priest who conserves his humanity while the whole country seems to fall down into the abyss. Los Heroes Sentimentales is a powerful novel, set in the 1990s Perú, based on real and documented facts, that illustrates to what amount simple and normal people, who only want to live in peace, can come to suffer when they see themselves absorbed by the hurricane of one of the most bloody and atrocious conflicts that Latin America experienced in its recent past.

author self-presentation:

My name is Rodrigo Murillo Bianchi. I was born in 1986 when Maradona scored his unforgettable goal, and when Chernobyl and the spaceship Challenger told the world that it wasn’t as modern and safe as it believed to be. I opened my eyes on the slopes of the volcano Misti, on an August day, in Arequipa (Perú). As a child I wanted to be a soccer player. I was an agile and tenacious goalkeeper, and my idols were Gialuca Pagliuca and Jorge Campos. When I learned that this was not possible, and given that I liked reading, I decided to become a lawyer. I did it and during a few years I worked for a bank corporationa and two law firms. Then there came the day when, bored by the routine and the corporate tedium, I decided to become a historian and I gave up my work as a lawyer. And when I was a historian and university chair of history, I decided to come to Europe and turn into a political scientist, analyst and journalist. Besides my professional law career (UPC), I studied Literary Narrative (PUCP) and completed two MA degrees. One in History, at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), and the other in International Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

 SOURCE: Nuevos Talentos (publisher)

Snippet: Almeida’s “The faithful deceased” – Camões prize 2018

Germano Almeida, O fiel defunto [The faithful deceased], 2018, 328 p.

winner of the Camões prize 2018

publisher’s summary:

Everybody was caught by surprise, so no one tried to prevent the unexpected murder of the best known and most translated writer of the islands, a few moments before the start of the presentation ceremony of what turned out to be his last work. And yet, on that day the vast auditorium overflowed with a festive crowd of fans and other curious, all impatient with the expectation of an autograph in the already very popular book that they were preparing to acquire. So it had not occurred to anyone that an event of this nature, always awaited with general and great anxiety, could have such an unexpected as well as brutal outcome, especially given the quality of the people involved in the tragedy.

 

The Wikipedia offers this short article on Germano Almeida (Cape Verde, 1945), and this  one on the Camões Prize. Amazon lists Almeida’s novel The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araujo as available in English.

This blog has got articles on previous editions of the Camões prize: 2015, 2014.

SOURCE: Caminho (publisher)

Snippet: Daniel Vázquez’ “Lena”

Daniel Vázquez Sallés, Lena, 2018, 240 p.

publisher’s summary:

The first time that Martin saw Lena on the beach, he knew that this young girl would be the woman of his life, but for this he has got to pay an expensive toll: turn into a hit man.

And though it might have been chance that made his life come across that of the Enabler (“el Posibilista”), maybe it was not such coincidence that the assumed the human condition of killing on request. Because if something was written it was no his vocation, but his insane love for Lena, that fatal writer, loved –and disowned– by her peers.

Assuming Knopfler’s identity and the infinite risks coming along with being a killer were no impediment for Martin, because his final goal, Lena, was the gift. And after all, Lena is the love story between a hit man and a writer over time. Daniel Vázques Sallés doesn’t play with the readers, but accompanies them along a life journey full of turns and of winks to the city of Barcelona and to some its famous and anonymous characters that, in one way or another, at some moment or another, have come across the author’s life.

 

The writer Daniel Vázquez Sallés (Barcelona, 1966) is best known for being the son of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939-2003). There is more information on him, Lena and his previous books on the pages of the Balcells literary agency.

SOURCE: Alrevés (publisher)

Snippet: Alberto Ruy’s “The serpent’s dreams”

Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Los sueños de la serpiente [The serpent’s dreams], 2017, 304 p.

winner of the 2018 Mazatlán literature prize [named after and offered by a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, Wikipedia (Spanish)]

publisher’s summary:

To retrieve his memory, a centenary man, locked up in a psychiatric ward, writes and draws at the walls of his cell the memories that are coming back. This throws him into an adventure through the big illusions and disappointments of his century, and leads him to discover the multiple lives that inhabit him. He has to invent his ancestors and let distill a deeper truth. He has to invent himself from a few shreds of memories or delusions.

His mystery becomes unraveled with shocks, silences and overflows: apparently he is a Mexican emigré to the United States, unhappily in love with the woman who will be seduced for other purposes than love by Trotsky’s assassin. Newly emigrated to the Soviet Union, he turns into a worker in the weapons plant that Henry Ford sold to Stalin to create a Utopian Soviet Detroit. Finally he will be the calligrapher and builder of this peculiar labyrinth. At the centenary of the Soviet Revolution, his testimony is an echo chamber of both, enthusiast and painful echoes. His catatonia and his awakening are those of the century. And they haven’t ended yet.

 

From J.A. Masoliver Ródenas’ review:

We are in front of a novel that is as complex as it is clear, audacious and exciting.

 

There is an English website dedicated to Alberto Ruy Sánchez (Mexico, D.F., 1951).

 

SOURCE: Alfaguara (PRH Spain; publisher); review in “Cultura/s,” La Vanguardia, June 9, 2018, p. 7 [printed edition]

Snippet: Hernández’ “The pain of the others”

Miguel Ángel Hernández, El dolor de los demás [The pain of the others], 2018, 312 p.

publisher’s summary:

On Christmas Eve 1995, Miguel Ángel Hernández’ best friend murdered his sister and took his life jumping into a gorge. It happened in a hamlet in the garden area of Murcia. Nobody ever knew why. The investigation was closed, and the crime remained for ever in oblivion. Twenty years later, when the wounds seem to have stopped bleeding and the mourning has been completed, the writer decides to return to the area and, putting himself into the detective’s skin, tries to reconstruct that tragic night that marked the end of his adolescence. But traveling in time always means changing the past, and the investigation wakes up ghosts that he believed to have left behind: the childhood marked by the Church, sin and guilt; the constant presence of disease and death; the oppressive and closed universe that one day he managed to leave behind. And with them there also emerges the experience of a contradictory nostalgia: the memory of a veiled happiness, the reunion with an unjustly buried origin.

A moving novel about the collision of two worlds and two ways of life. A superb narration in two times that brings the readers into a profound and unexplored Spain. A reckoning with the past. But, above all, a subtle and incisive meditation on the ethics of literature that, as the narrator of this story says in some moment, makes us become aware that “by writing one doesn’t always win,that sometimes we also shipwreck before the pain of the others.”

Anagrama has got a foreign rights page with some biographic information on Hernández and summaries of his previous novels published there, among them Escape attempt, which is available in English.

Update (4 Jan. 2022): Le Monde informs that this book is available in French as Vingt ans plus tard.

SOURCE: Anagrama (publisher)

Snippet: Mónica Baños, “Where the stars disappear” (juvenile literature)

Mónica Baños, Donde desaparecen las estrellas [Where the stars disappear], 2018, 320 p.

winner of the 6th La Caixa / Plataforma prize for a juvenile novel

from the news:

The 22-year-old law student Mónica Baños recently won the La Caixa / Plataforma literary prize for her debut novel Donde desaparecen las estrellas, endowed with 3,000 EUR plus the novel’s publication.

 

publisher’s summary:

If there is anything that characterizes the small coastal village of Melía, it is the popular belief that the stars can influence the lives of its inhabitants.

Gala lives there, a young woman who spends her days working in a flowershop. Everything changes with the return of Néstor, one of her closest childhood friends. But Gala is not the same one any longer: a series of events that took place during the past year have turned her into a lonely and somewhat aloof person.

When she gets the opportunity to work for the local newspaper, and thus dispel the bad memories that torment her, she meets on her way with Constanza, an elegant elderly lady who brings to light secrets of Gala’s family that are colored by pain but above all by hope.

Gala will have to learn to pardon the ghosts of her past while she find the way to pardon herself.

SOURCE: CCMA (ANC news agency) May 2, 2018; La Caixa (savings bank); Plataforma (publisher)

Snippet: Badal’s “things seen with nonexisting eyes”

Josep Lluís Badal, Les coses que realment han vist aquests ulls inexistents [The things that really have been seen by these nonexisting eyes], 2017, 264 p.

winner of the Premi Crítica Serra d’Or novel prize 2018 [not endowed, but prestigious, awarded by Serra d’Or magazine, a publication of Montserrat abbey]

Cover text:

There is an immense and unstructured night. But it’s “apostrophised” with our heart. It’s mid-afternoon, the weather is nice, father’s shirtsleeves are rolled up. Outside a dog barks, the elms throb, the attic tap drips. One can hear my brother’s blows, he is busy at the courtyard workshop. Mother is downstairs, serving at the shop, or better said, waiting for the first customer of the afternoon. The house smells of work, of cold food. A certain smell of earth, of hanging tomatoes, of potatoes on straw, of absence. Sitting on the sink, resting from the day, from work, from illness, from life, that in recent years he has insisted considering a farce, my father contemplates a cloud.

Underneath the red moustache he smiles.

I miss you.

SOURCE: Casa del libro (bookseller; Planeta); Publicacions d’Abadia de Montserrat (publisher)

Snippet: EDEBÉ prizes 2018 for children’s and juvenile literature

The prizes of the 26th edition of the edebé for children’s and juvenile literature were awarded on Feb. 1, 2018 – endowed with 55,000 EUR each.

Children’s literature: Soy una nuez [I’m a walnut] by Beatriz Osés, 2018, 128 p.

summary :

Illustrated by Jordi Sempere, Soy una nuez explains the story of Omar, an orphan child refugee. Walnuts are strong on the outside, and inside they have the form of a brain, explains Osés, the shell can be a boat. (La Vanguardia)

An original, funny and endearing novel that talks to us about the persons’ and the refugees’ loneliness.

My name is Omar and I am a walnut. My father was a gardener and my mother smelled like cinnamon. Both were eaten by the sea shortly before reaching the beach. I saw them disappear while floting in that nutshell together with other strangers. Of the three, only I wore a small lifevest with my name on it. It had been written by my mother so that I would never forget it. (edebé)

author information:

Beatriz Osés (1972, Madrid). Journalist, a graduate of Universidad Complutense, is a writer and teacher of [Spanish] Language and Literature. By her work she wants to incentivate her students’ creativity and foment reading through literary creation.

She has won numerous prizes for educational innovation and literary creation. Among her works published by edebé stand out Un cocodrilo para Laura [A crocodile for Laura] and the crime saga protagonized by Erik Vogler.

http://beatrizosesgarcia.blogspot.com.es/

 

Juvenile literature: Desconocidos [Unknown], by David Lozano, 2018, 224 p.

summary:

Two young people who got in touch on the internet agree to meet in Barcelona; and on the Costa Brava [coast north of Barcelona] a female police inspector suspects of an alleged suicide. Lozano has got a lot of fans; he sold 150,000 copies of Donde surgen las sombras [Where the shadows emerge]. (La Vanguardia)

Two stories, the same night, and a dark suspicion.

Two lives cross late at night through the networks. Two youngsters who submit to a mysterious game: share their dreams, hopes and fears, but not their identity. They quickly take the next step: a blind date. But meeting with a stranger always involves risks. Because we all hide secrets…

A corpse. The body of a young guy, disfigured by the violence of the fall. A young life ruined for ever, a death that arouses more questions than answers. (edebé)

author information:

David Lozano Garbala (Zaragoza, 1974) is a law graduate of Universidad de Zaragoza. He has also got an M.A. in Communication and studied Spanish Philology. He worked as a lawyer, and nowadays he combines writing and teaching with working as a screenwriter for different Spanish production companies.

In 2006, he won the 28th Gran Angular prize of juvenile literature with the novel Donde surgen las sombras [Where the shadows emerge]. With Herejía [Heresy] he was runner-up of the Hache prize, with El ladrón de minutos [The thief of minutes] runner-up of the edebé of children’s literature; he is also the author of the gothic fantasy trilogy La Puerta Oscura [The dark door], that he is currently transforming into a cinema script. His novels have been translated into different languages and can be acquired in a dozen countries.

Edebé has published his children’s novel El ladrón de minutos [The thief of minutes], translated into German, Italian, Persian and Turkish.

 

SOURCE: Edebé (publisher; Osés, Lozano); La Vanguardia, Feb. 3, 2018, p. 33 [printed edition]