The autumn booklist

His­tory

Rafel Vall­bona brings us an his­tor­i­cal novel in La casa de la fron­tera (Ed. 62, Sep­tem­ber), the story of a 20th-cen­tury Cer­danya fam­ily. Mean­while, Roger Bastida’s La Mi­rada de la sar­gan­tana (Columna, Au­gust 30) talks about the muse of Ramon Casas, Júlia Peraire, while El re­torn (Columna, Sep­tem­ber 6), by Car­les Casajuana, deals with a dif­fi­cult pe­riod in the life of Josep Carner, when he re­turned to Cat­alo­nia after 30 years of exile. Vi­cent Usó takes us all the way back to the 16th cen­tury in La Mi­rada de Michelan­gelo (Bromera, No­vem­ber), a novel about the Re­nais­sance ge­nius, and a mix of noire lit­er­a­ture and psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller.

Lluís Llach’s lat­est book, El noi del Mar­avil­las (Empúries, No­vem­ber 8), fol­lows the life of a singer, the son of a Civil War refugee and a Sene­galese sol­dier from the Argel­ers camp. Llach’s his­tor­i­cal novel cov­ers the whole of the 20th cen­tury and is mainly set in Mar­avil­las, a cabaret on Barcelona’s Paral·lel. Barcelona’s ver­sion of Broad­way is also the set­ting for Rossend Llurba’s Història del Paral·lel (Co­mane­gra, Sep­tem­ber), a his­tory of the pop­u­lar the­atri­cal av­enue from 1900 to 1950.

Through the recipes of the skilled cook, Maria Badia, the writer Carme Martí takes a look at the his­tory of the 20th cen­tury in El Camí de les Aigües (Am­s­ter­dam, Oc­to­ber 16). Other his­tor­i­cal, but more per­sonal nov­els, come from Joan-Daniel Bez­sonoff with El fill del coro­nel (L’Avenç, Sep­tem­ber) and Lluís-Maria Todó with Gramàtica dels noms propis (Club Ed­i­tor, Sep­tem­ber). Lluís Foix’s El que la terra m’ha donat (Columna, Oc­to­ber 25), fol­lows the rhythm of the four sea­sons, while Josep L. Badal’s Les coses que real­ment han vist aque­sts ulls in­ex­is­tents (Rata, Oc­to­ber 18) brings to­gether the writer’s child­hood mem­o­ries of a re­mote vil­lage.

A look at the pre­sent

Other writ­ers have found in­spi­ra­tion in the pre­sent: while in Robin­son (Empúries, Oc­to­ber 18)Vicenç Pagès fo­cuses on a squat­ter who oc­cu­pies the house of a fam­ily while they are on hol­i­day, Jordi Puntí’s Això no és Amèrica (Empúries, Sep­tem­ber) is a se­ries of short sto­ries about un­usual char­ac­ters try­ing to find their way in an ab­surd world. Va­len­cian writer Martí Domínguez re­leases the thriller L’as­sassí que es­ti­mava els lli­bres (Proa, Sep­tem­ber), an ironic look at the local bour­geoisie where the dead vic­tim turns out to be a lit­er­ary critic. Mean­while, young writ­ers in­clude Maria Guasch with Els fills de la lla­cuna (Be­gues, 1983) and Coia Valls, whose Si tu m’es­coltes (Co­mane­gra, Sep­tem­ber) fol­lows the story of John Cav­age, an Amer­i­can win­ner whose life changes after los­ing every­thing.

Po­etry & es­says

High­lights in­clude Joan Mar­garit’s lat­est vol­ume of po­etry, Un hivern fasci­nant (Proa, Oc­to­ber) and Joan Brossa’s Poèmes inèdits (Rata, No­vem­ber). A must among non-fic­tion is Monika Zgus­tova’s Vestides per a un ball a la neu (Galàxia Guten­berg, Sep­tem­ber), a book for which she in­ter­viewed sur­vivors of the gulag camps, while Agustí Pons analy­ses the three rev­o­lu­tions that marked Eu­rope in Zuric, 1917. Lenin, Joyce, Tzara (Pòrtic, Sep­tem­ber).

For­eign lit­er­a­ture

Paul Auster is first among for­eign au­thors, with a new vol­ume that comes after seven years of si­lence: 4321 (Edi­cions 62/ Seix Bar­ral), in which Auster re­turns to his roots as a writer. In fact, Auster vis­ited Cata­lan Book Week in Barcelona in Sep­tem­ber to pre­sent the book, about a char­ac­ter who lives four si­mul­ta­ne­ous and in­de­pen­dent lives.

Among this au­tumn’s best­sellers are Dan Brown’s Ori­gen (Columna/ Plan­eta, Oc­to­ber 5), a novel set in var­i­ous places in Cat­alo­nia (Sagrada Família, Montser­rat, La Pe­dr­era…), while David Leg­ercrantz con­tin­ues the Mil­len­nium saga with L’home que perseguia la seva ombra (Columna/ Des­tino, Sep­tem­ber 7). The British writer Ken Fol­let pre­sented the se­quel of Els Pi­lars de la terra, Una columna de foc (Rosa dels Vents/ Plaza & Janes, Sep­tem­ber 12).

Other nov­el­ties are Arund­hati Roy, who hadn’t pub­lished any­thing for 20 years. El min­is­teri de la fe­lic­i­tat suprema (Ana­grama, Sep­tem­ber), is a work based on a jour­ney in India. Roy vis­ited Barcelona’s CCCB on Oc­to­ber 2. Mean­while, Salman Rushdie, pub­lishes La decadència de Neró Golden (Proa/ Seix Bar­ral, No­vem­ber 8), in which he crit­i­cally analy­ses the last decade in the United States.

Periscopi pub­lishes the lat­est title by the Pak­istani writer Moshin Hamid, Sor­tida a Oc­ci­dent, and El fer­ro­car­ril sub­ter­rani by Amer­i­can Col­son White­head, win­ner of this year’s Pulitzer prize, and who will also visit Barcelona this Oc­to­ber. The Ital­ian writer Roberto Sa­viano ex­plores the Camorra in La banda dels nanos, set in pre­sent-day Naples (Ana­grama, Sep­tem­ber).

Awaited trans­la­tions

L’Altra Ed­i­to­r­ial re­vis­its El cor és un caçador soli­tari, by Car­son Mc­Cullers (Oc­to­ber), and var­i­ous texts and ar­ti­cles brought to­gether in the vol­ume Entre la soli­tud i el somni. Joan-Lluís Lluís has trans­lated L’ar­renca cors, by Boris Vian (Club Ed­i­tor, No­vem­ber) and for the first time in Cata­lan we get William Faulkner’s La mansió, and Vic­tor Hugo’s Els tre­bal­ladors del mar, both pub­lished by Edi­cions 1984. Fi­nally, Zanoni, is a rare work by UK play­wright Ed­ward Bul­wer-Lyt­ton (Ade­siara).