For the founder of Anagrama, Jorge Herralde, Rafael Chirbes (1949-2015) was one of his best literary friendships, along with Carmen Martín Gaite, who, precisely, was the one who put them in contact. With the Valencian writer, Herralde built an "absolute editorial trust" that began with Mimoun and continued with "so many and so many" books published by the Barcelona publishing house, such as La buena letra, La larga marcha, La caída de Madrid and the successes that elevated him as a writer, Crematorio and En la orilla. A recognition that came late and in which his "allergy to sequins" and his discretion made it difficult for him to achieve it.
Six years after his death, Anagrama has just published the first volume of Chirbes' diaries, Diarios. A ratos perdidos 1 y 2, which covers from 1985, when his literary career began, until 2005, just before Crematorio. This first volume represents two of the six archives in which Chirbes left his memoirs, which he first wrote by hand and then transferred to a computer, as explained by editor Silvia Sesé. The rest will be translated into "two volumes or more" due to their length and reach until June 2015, shortly before his death.
Chirbes, "one of the greats" of Spanish literature according to his editor, reveals himself in these diaries, reviewed by his literary executor, Juan Manuel Ruiz, to whom he asked that their publication not overshadow his novels, his "works with capital letters," as he called them. Ruiz had no doubt that they had to be published as he progressed in his reading and saw how his greatness overflowed, despite fearing that a "psychiatrization" of his work would occur, which he regrets the prologue written by Marta Sanz has done.
Diarios. A ratos perdidos 1 y 2 and the volumes to come have jumps in time, eliminated by Chirbes when he felt there was not the necessary narrative tension. Among the ellipses, he openly recounts his doubts, weaknesses, fears, illnesses, and ambitions, as well as his opinions and experiences about the books he read, the movies he watched, the music he liked, the trips he made, his personal relationships, politics... About practically everything.
This is not Chirbes' only posthumous work, after Paris-Austerlitz was published months after his death. That late novel that speaks of love, heartbreak, and death was a gift the writer left to his readers, to which these notebooks are now added, in which he shows how he lived and wrote, and undoubtedly complete his literary work.