Sant Jordi 2023: recommendations for reading this April 23
The New Barcelona Post proposes a selection of 10 titles for all tastes, with new releases and classics, among which fiction predominates, but also includes essays and autobiography
After the apocalyptic Sant Jordi a year ago, with rain, hail, and gusts of wind, the city is preparing to forget the bad experience and relive April 23 in style, definitively considering the pandemic overcome and crossing its fingers for no more storms. The numbers speak for themselves, with the forecast of gathering 320 stalls, the highest number in history, and organizing more author signings throughout the day.
Barcelona will repeat the literary super-block it premiered a year ago, cutting off traffic in the area between Paseo de Gràcia, Diagonal, Rambla Catalunya, and Gran Via to allow for peaceful strolling. The big novelty this year will be the return of La Rambla to the route for finding a book and a rose, a stop lost in recent years. A small extension will even be added, including Gran de Gràcia to the conventional excursion that used to be made before the arrival of covid, so one can start in Travessera de Gràcia and reach Plaza Reial. With so much ground to cover,it's important to be clear about which books to give as gifts or self-gifts, preferably always accompanied by a rose. Here is a selection of the latest releases and some classics, with 10 titles for all tastes.
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell (Libros del Asteroide/L'Altra Editorial)
After the worldwide success of Hamnet, with more than 100,000 copies sold in Spanish, Maggie O'Farrell returns to the fray with another of those characters she likes so much and defines as"lives written with water", untold stories, superficially known through the eyes of others. The writer now focuses on Lucrezia de'Medici, the unknown protagonist of one of her favorite poems,My Last Duchessof Robert Browning, often heard in UK schools, despite the protagonist confessing to the murder of his previous wife. When she started investigating, she discovered that this character had existed and, not only had her husband killed her, but she was a 16-year-old girl. She already had a story and probably another sales phenomenon, without this being at odds with careful and detailed prose, exciting even when one knows the ending from the beginning.
The Teacher and the Beast, Imma Monsó (Anagrama)
After being the town crier for Sant Jordi last year, Imma Monsó celebrates this April 23 withThe Teacher and the Beast, a coming-of-age novel in which she portrays the silences of the post-war period through a reserved teacher who suffers in advance. The plot, harsh and heartfelt, recovers that ingenuity, also helplessness, that has been lost among so many screens, now that everyone knows everything, or at least they think so. It is Imma Monsó's first novel with Anagrama, published in Catalan and Spanish, with the author's translation, accompanied by the reissues ofQuite a characterandA Man of His Word.
Montevideo, Enrique Vila-Matas (Seix Barral)
Enrique Vila-Matas publishesMontevideo after "three years, a pandemic and transformative personal circumstances, vitally and literarily." The first draft of the book took him a year, before he entered the hospital and underwent a kidney transplant, donated by his wife, Paula de Palma, to whom he dedicates the novel with a "my enamored soul trembles."With ten translations underway, the Barcelona writer defines his latest novel as "a true fiction, a great treatise on the ambiguity of the world" in which a writer who cannot escape literature embarks on a circular journey through doors and adjoining rooms that connect Paris with Cascais, Montevideo, Reykjavik, St. Gallen, and Bogotá. Oh, and Vila-Matas is already writing his next novel.
Oración a Proserpina, Albert Sánchez Piñol (Alfaguara/La Campana)
Although Albert Sánchez Piñol never drops by the Sant Jordi stalls to sign copies, he usually positions himself as one of the most sought-after and best-selling authors of the day, as happened a year agowith The Monster of Saint Helena. This April 23 presentsPrayer to Proserpina, a new adventure storywith which to travel to a distant world, this time inhabited by Romans and some horrible monsters called tectons. Sánchez Piñol manages to make any of his stories captivating, whatever the excuse, vindicating fiction as an escape door to parallel realities, without giving sentimental sermons and making the reader simply have a good time reading.
Everything will get better, Almudena Grandes (Tusquets)
Almudena Grandes' last book depicts a country that does not seem so distant, perhaps tracing some possible emergency exit to circumvent it. The Madrid writer could not finish it and it was her husband, Luis García Montero, who put together the pending chapter, without pretending "to be at Almudena's narrative level, but to write, as she wanted, some pages that followed her instructions." With the arrival of the pandemic, Grandes interrupted the series Episodes of an endless war, a narrative project about anti-Franco resistance that has also remained unfinished, to writeEverything is going to get better, resorting to science fiction to capture a reality that surpassed anything anyone could have imagined.
Consum preferent, Andrea Genovart (Anagrama)
Consum preferentimmerse the reader in a chaotic anxiety to the rhythm of notifications, with new emails arriving in the inbox that prevent reflection, only tolerating vomits of half-baked, contradictory and unfiltered thoughts. Andrea Genovart's first novel, Premi Llibres d'Anagrama de Novel·la, is a portrait of that accelerated life in a city like Barcelona, with its many drawbacks, offering an infinity of options and condemning to the impossibility of fitting into any of them.
Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead (Random House/Edicions del Periscopi)
Edicions del Periscopi is celebrating its anniversary, completing 10 years as an independent publisher that has brought contemporary works in Catalan to readers that have stood out for their literary value, maintaining a calm publication rhythm and shying away from overproduction.The Rhythm of Harlemof Colson Whitehead is one of his new releases in the first months of the year, a mix of moral drama and detective novel that arrives afterThe Underground RailroadandThe Boys of the Nickel, with which the American author has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Also, to celebrate the first decade, the Barcelona label has launcheda collection of 10 titles by 10 different authors.
A Kidnapped West, Milan Kundera (Tusquets)
From The Festival of Insignificance(2014), there are no new developments in sight from Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, now over 90 years old, who crossed borders with titles such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, always a must-read. Beyond his fiction, full of philosophical asides, the intellectual Kundera shows himself inA Kidnapped West, a small volume edited by Tusquets that collects two previously unpublished texts in Spain, one of them especially premonitory, warning of the threat that Russia poses to the rest of Europe.
Al mig de la vida,jo, Marina Porras (Bruguera)
Mercè Rodoreda is one of the great names in Catalan literature and a good way to learn about her life is through the illustrated biography published by Bruguera,In the middle of life, I. Written by Marina Porras and with illustrations by Elisa Munsó, it reviews the most relevant chapters of the writer's life, now that 40 years have passed since her death.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Salamandra)
The Little Prince it is always a good gift, especially when one is a little older, one of those "grown-up people" that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry talks about. This year, a new excuse to give it as a gift arises if someone has run out of ideas, with this story celebrating its 80th anniversary without losing an iota of relevance and captivating, year after year, more than five million readers worldwide, with translations in more than 500 languages. To celebrate the anniversary, Salamandra will publish four new books throughout the year, with the first two already available for Sant Jordi, withThe Little Prince. Where are you, fox?, with a game of hide-and-seek to catch the little ones, and the bilingual edition in Spanish and English, also in Catalan and English.
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