Snippet: The critics recommend (El País, Spain, May 2020)

(c) cover design by Fernando Vicente, EL PAÍS, 23/05/20

As the Madrid Book Fair, normally held with hundreds of booths in Retiro park, was postponed to October, El País‘ culture supplement “Babelia” had recommendations for Spanish readers for the moment after the strict lockdown when they would be able to visit physical bookstores again. A lot of the recommended books (History, essays, juvenile literature) were translations from English to Spanish. Some of the books originally written in Spanish are listed here (a subjective choice among those not treated in earlier posts); they would probably deserve an individual blog post each, but this blogger doesn’t find the time or energy to write as often as he would like…

Spanish narrative as recommended by Carlos Pardo

Juan Gómez Bárcena, Ni siquiera los muertos [Not even the dead], Sexto Piso, 2020, 350 p.,
“five centuries of progress (and barbarity) told with a bold stylistic leap that combines the chronicles of the conquest of America with the modern frontier literature.”

Sergio del Molino, La piel [The skin], Alfaguara, 2020, 240 p.,
“is the personal chronicle of a disease, psoriasis, but also a cultural history of monstruosity, racism and stigma. With star appearances of Nabokov, Cyndi Lauper, Stalin…”

There is a 2017 post on Sergio del Molino.

Paco Inclán, Dadas las circunstancias [Given the circumstances], Jekyll&Jill, 2020, 160 p., “[the texts] are a wonderful combination of mad reportage, burlesque erudition, and bittersweet story.”

 

Latin-American narrative as recommended by Marta Sanz

Fernanda García Lao, Nación vacuna [Vaccine nation], Candaya, 2020, 144 p.,
“is a profetical book. The skin bristles as it grazes stinging keywords: body, infection, vaccine.”

Casa del Libro (bookstore) Madrid during lockdown, as shown in EL PAÍS, 04/04/20, p. 32

SOURCE: “Babelia,” El País, May 23, 2020, p. 4 [printed edition]

Snippet: the 25 best books in Spanish of the last 25 years

This blogger stumbled upon another of those lists so loved by El País newspaper (and other newspapers and online publications around the world as well…). Often both the number of titles included and the period of time under study are totally arbitrary. Here it is a list for the 25th anniversary of Babelia, the newspaper’s culture supplement. The full list includes 100 titles, and the slide show of the first 25 includes a summary for each book (in Spanish).

1. Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (2004), available in English as 2666: A Novel
2. Mario Vargas Llosa, La fiesta del chivo (2000), = The Feast of the Goat: A Novel
3. Roberto Bolaño,  Los detectives salvajes (1998), = The Savage Detectives: A Novel
4. Javier Marías, Tu rostro mañana (2002), = Your Face Tomorrow
5. Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compañía (2000), = Bartleby & Co.
6. Mario Levrero, La novela luminosa (2005) [“The luminous novel,” not translated, unknown author to this blogger]
7. Javier Cercas, Soldados de Salamina (2001), = Soldiers of Salamis
8. Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges (2006), [“biography” of a friendship, not translated]
9. Javier Marías, Corazón tan blanco (1992), = A Heart So White [this blogger’s first contact with contemporary (Spanish) literature]
10. Juan Marsé, Rabos de lagartija (2000), = Lizard Tails
11. Juan José Saer, La grande (2005), = La Grande (English)
12. Javier Cercas, Anatomía de un instante (2009), = The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination
13. Jorge Baron Biza, El desierto y su semilla (1998), [“The desert and its seed,” not translated, unknown author to this blogger]
14. Rafael Chirbes, Crematorio (2007), [“Crematorium”, not translated]
15. Elena Poniatowska, Tinísima (1992), = Tinisima [fictionalized account of the life of Tina Modotti (1896-1942)]
16. Antonio Muñoz Molina, La noche de los tiempos (2009), = In the Night of Time
17. Fernando Vallejo, El desbarrancadero (2001), [“The away pusher,” not translated, unknown author to this blogger]
18. Juan José Saer, La pesquisa (1994), [“The investigation,” not translated, unknown author to this blogger]
19. Tulio Halperin Donghi, Son memorias (2008), [“These are memories,” not translated, by an Argentine historian unknown to this blogger]
20. Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Vendrán más años malos y nos harán más ciegos (1993), [“There will come more bad years and they will make us blinder,” not translated]
21. José Ángel Valente, Fragmentos de un libro futuro (2000), [“Fragments of a future book,” not translated, unknown author to this blogger]
22. Diamela Eltit, Jamás el fuego nunca (2007), [“Never ever the fire never,” not translated, unknown author to this blogger]
23. Carmen Martín Gaite, Nubosidad variable (1992), [“Partly cloudy,” not translated]
24. Tomás Eloy Martínez, Santa Evita (1995), = Santa Evita (English)
25. Francisco Casavella, El día del Watusi (2002-3), [“Watusi’s day”, not translated]

Quite a few (dead) authors to be discovered…

SOURCE: El País, Oct. 29, 2016

Snippet: Fernando Aramburu’s “Fatherland”

Fernando Aramburu, Patria [Fatherland], 2016

Publisher’s summary:

On the day that [the terrorist organization] ETA anounces that it will abandon the armed struggle [for the Basque Country’s independence] [Oct. 20, 2011], Bittori visits the cementery to tell the grave of her husband, el Txato, assassinated by the terrorists, that she has decided to return to the house where they lived. Will she be able to live with those who harassed her before and after the attack that upset her life and that of her family? Will she be able to know who was the hooded man who on a rainy day killed her husband on the way home from his transport company? She might arrive as discretely as she wants, Bittori’s presence will definitely alter the village’s false tranquility, above all that of her neighbor Miren, an intimate friend in other times and mother of Joxe Mari, an imprisoned terrorist and suspect of Bittori’s worst fears. What happened between these two women? What has poisoned the life of their sons and husbands who were so close in the past? With their hidden sprains and unwavering convictions, their wounds and courage, the incandescent story of their lives before and after the crater, that was the death of el Txato, talks to us about the impossibility to forget and the necessity to forgive in a community broken by political fanatism.

From the review by José-Carlos Mainer, “Babelia”, El País:

… it is an extensive and memorable novel that encompasses 40 years of fascistization of a closed and distrustful society, and as many years of moral degradation of government institutions. Everything’s there: the world of the armed struggle and the imprisonment of its heroes, the hypocrite and cruel concealment of its victims, the constitution of a mentality of  a “chosen” and persecuted “people,” the sultry role of the Catholic church and its parish imams, the daily and systematic division of a community into the good and the bad. Aramburu has portrayed the two faces of an archaic and patriarchal society. And it becomes clear that the same mentality that sustains a great social cohesion has been the breeding ground for the justification of violence and of the fascist harrassment of the suspect. …

Patria is above all a great and pondered novel. But the genre’s tradition carries with it the virtue of explaining to its contemporaries something of the world they have to live in: to amalgamate evocation and analysis.

More information by the publisher on the writer Fernando Aramburu (San Sebastian, 1959) who since 1985 has resided in Germany.

To know more about the actual state of (political) affairs in the Basque Country, follow the news about the regional elections that will take place on Sept. 25, 2016. The governing party right now is the “moderate nationalist” PNV (Basque nationalist party); EH Bildu is the “radical” nationalist party pursuing independence from Spain. It will be interesting to see how the local branch of Podemos will fare, a party that defines itself as more interested in social justice than nationalism.

 

UPDATE March 14, 2018:

Meanwhile, Patria has been translated into other languages, an there haven been English-speaking articles on the book:

Politico (March 2017)

The Conversation (August 2017)

On the German version (in German):

Perlentaucher

FAZ (author interview)

Deutschlandfunk (on the situation in the Basque Country after ETA)

UPDATE May 3, 2018:

Finally, this blogger got around to actually reading the novel himself. He liked it. It is probably one of the best novels written in Spanish in recent times. Its strength lies in the realistic presentation of both sides, the author’s empathy with the victims and to a certain degree also with the murderers. He shows how the terror affects the victims’ and the assassin’s families, how the whole society is poisoned by it. And Aramburu is not trying to win political gains in a triumphalist manner as done by Spanish Popular Party politicians, he also talks about police brutality.

And meanwhile ETA has announced its definite dissolution for Friday, May 4, 2018. Cf. the news @ The Guardian.

UPDATE May 4, 2019:

There is an English version available, entitled Homeland, and The New York Times offers a review.

 

SOURCE: Tusquets (publisher);  review in “Babelia”, El País, Sept. 3, 2016, p. 9 [printed edition]