Ten literary recommendations for this Christmas

Holidays are a good time to catch up on all the news that could not be assimilated in the last months of the year, always more loaded with work than usual after the vacation break. And it never hurts to remember that Christmas is the second time of the year after Sant Jordi when more books are given as gifts, including the Three Kings. The New Barcelona Post selects some of the most outstanding titles, with a mix of local and foreign writers, with a lot of fiction and a bit of the increasingly acclaimed graphic novel.

• The Admunsen Papers (Navona) by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Chance sometimes holds unexpected and very valuable gifts like finding an unpublished novel by Manuel Vázquez Montalbánamong the 70 boxes of archives that the family had given to researchers after the author's death 20 years ago. Even more so, when reviewing it, it is detected that it is the first one he wrote and never managed to publish. Nor did he mention it to his relatives. The Navona publishing house has been in charge of publishing Vázquez Montalbán's new book, thus continuing the task of recovering his works, which is completely essential, taking into account that some are difficult to find. Thus, it has republished titles such asAutobiography of General Franco, The Merry Lads of Atzavara,The Strangler andSentimental Chronicle of the TransitionNext year will be the turn ofErec and Enide.

• Todos los cuentos (Tusquets) by Cristina Fernández Cubas

Reading Cristina Fernández Cubas means immersing oneself in an unexpected universe, where new truths coexist among us as if they were ghosts and manage to unleash mysterious realities in everyday details. And all this in a few pages. An excellent short story writer, the Barcelona-born author was awarded this year with the National Prize for Spanish Literature, presented by the Ministry of Culture. The holidays can be a good time to do an intensive Fernández Cubas withAll the stories (2008), a compilation of all his work that won the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize, or a good excuse to delve into his latest volume,Nona's Room (2015), with which he won the National Narrative Prize. Both are published by Tusquets publishing house.

• Tríptic (Club Editor) by Eva Baltasar

Eva Baltasar's trilogy is now concentrated in a single volume. Tríptic gathers in 360 pages the novelistic universe of the first Catalan author to reach the final of the prestigious Booker Prize. It began withPermagel(2018), continued withBoulder (2020), published a few days before the lockdown, and ended withMamut (2022), managing to become in just five years one of the big names in current Catalan fiction. A harsh journey around the concept of motherhood with women who live uncomfortably in society and transit on the margins. Club Editor proposes a good way to discover (or rediscover) Baltasar before next year she moves to the next screen and publishes her fourth novelOccasions and fascination, about a young woman who has been kicked out of her apartment and survives by cleaning houses.

• Els habitants del pis 200 (Males Herbes) by Elvira Augusta Lewi

A brief introduction to a very unknown local writer, Elvira Augusta Lewi (Barcelona, 1909). Her figure is one of the great mysteries of Catalan literature before the Civil War, her trace being lost with the arrival of the dictatorship. Males Herbes now publishesThe inhabitants of apartment 200, a collection of seven stories that had been published for the first and last time in the fateful year 1936, many of which had previously appeared in magazines when the German-born author was just over 20 years old. In all of them, one can feel Lewi's modern vision of gender roles, portraying issues such as male violence with a surprising clairvoyance through very refined stories that present characters distressed and punished by life. The publisher continues with Elvira Augusta Lewi the task of recovering pre-war novelists, as it did with Aurora Bertrana inThe City of the Young.

• The Queen of the Ball (Anagrama) by Camila Fabbri

The Prom Queenof Camila Fabbri became with a novel that started as a short storyas a finalist in the 41st edition of the Herralde Novel Prize, after the award was declared void the previous year for the first time. The Argentine writer, also a playwright and film director, has a slight obsession with accidents. Although she has not suffered any, this is how the novel she has titled thinking about theDancing queenof Abba, as can also be glimpsed that they are present in previous titles such as Lthe accidents(2015) andWe are safe(2022).

• Le dedico mi silencio (Alfaguara) by Mario Vargas Llosa

After the last page that concludes the adventures of Toño Azpilcueta, Lalo Molfino, criolla music and all of Peru, Mario Vargas Llosa confirms thatI dedicate my silence to youwill be his last novel. "I believe I have finished this novel now. Now, I would like to write an essay about Sartre, who was my teacher when I was young. It will be the last thing I write," he says. The Nobel Prize in Literature thus anticipates his farewell, having taken readers through the popular history of his native country, with a protagonist tormented by rats and convinced that waltzes and polkas can unite his kitschy neighbors. A fiction without ups and downs and at the same time thrilling, mixed with somewhat dense essays on Peruvian music par excellence. Whether it is the last or not, it is always good to read Vargas Llosa.

• Trilogy (De Conatus) by Jon Fosse

A gift that never fails is to read the latest Nobel Prize in Literature (or previous ones). This year it is the turn of the Norwegian Jon Fosse, who also admires the beloved Federico García Lorca. In Spain, it is published by the independent publishing house De Conatus, where it has recently been possible to readthe debut of Barcelona author Patricia Capdevila. Fosse was the least-selling author, and few trusted the tenacious defense made by his editors, Silvia Bardelás and Beatriz González. Until everything changed this 2023. Reading him is not easy, so it's best to start withTrilogy (2007), with a prose that devours the reader from the first lines through the story of a homeless couple, challenging the pre-established and delving into the mind in an almost hypnotic way. Later, they can dare withSeptology, also in De Conatus.

• A Landowner's Morning (Cal Carré) by Leo Tolstoy

Cal Carré, the publishing house that used to be a butcher shop, presents for these Holidays one of itsbooklets ---it resorts to its origins to classify books according to their size, it also publishesmenuts andtwo-color loins. After proposing short novels by Stendhal and Panait Istrati, it is the turn of another classic, Leo Tolstoy, who makes his debut in the catalog. He does so withA morning of the landowner, an easy story written by the Russian author in his youth, demonstrating mastery but without overwhelming with infinite and detailed narratives as he would later do in titles such asAnna Karenina. In this new course of the young label, with almost 20 books published, new releases are also expected from Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, from whom it has already editedSanditon ---the incomplete work of Austen now popularized after its adaptation into a series--- andA society.

• Autumn (Raig Verd) by Ali Smith

Surprise book subscriptions are gaining more and more weight, as demonstrated by the Bookish platform, which saved the historic Alibri bookstore from closure. An initiative that reaches bookstores, with wrapped copies for those who don't know which one to choose or want to be surprised, but also publishers. Raig Verd has launched a subscription model for its different imprints, with the possibility of periodically receiving a title of narrative, essay, science fiction, or young adult. For those who prefer to try just once, the publisher also offers book boxes, which include the book accompanied by matching accessories such as notebooks, bookmarks, or postcards. One of them is withThe return of Ali Smith orThe Twelve Directions of the Windof Ursula K. Le Guin, two classics of the house.

• White Shark (Editorial Finestres) by Genie Espinosa

The literary project of businessman Sergi Ferrer-Salat covers more and more areas, from the Finestres bookstores in Barcelona, awaiting a third in Palamós, up to the recently createdliterary residency on the Costa Brava. In between, there is Editorial Finestres, focused on comics and graphic novels in Catalan, with the aim of filling a gap in a sector that has been booming for years. One of the titles published this year isTauró Blanc, an investigation into grief from the world of dreams. Its author, the Badalona illustrator Genie Espinosa, won the Miguel Gallardo Award for breakthrough author at the 40th Barcelona Comic Fair withHoops.

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