Last August, in New York, a fanatic stabbed Salman Rushdie and left him without sight in one eye or mobility in one hand. It is a triumph of literature and life that in 2023 starts announcing two Anglo-Indian novelties, a fantastic-historical novel and an essay. Another literary victory is that Mario Vargas Llosa is talked about for his books - and not for his sentimental life -, in this case a compilation of writings about French culture. In Catalan, one of the phenomena that mark the beginning of the year are signings, such as that of Xavier Bosch for Univers (from Columna), or that of Marta Orriols for Proa (from Periscopi), along with heavyweight titles (Ferran Torrent , Màrius Serra, Imma Monsó, Albert Sánchez Piñol, Miquel de Palol or Enric Casasses).
Salman Rushdie. Ciudad Victoria (Random House)
The author of Hijos de la medianoche returns on February 9 to the historical story with magical touches. On this occasion, it all begins in the 14th century, when a goddess grants a girl important powers that allow her to live for centuries giving life and ruling a city, rebelling at the same time against a patriarchal world. Along with this fiction, a month later, on March 22, the author will publish The Language of Truth (Seix Barral/Empúries), short essays on literature, language and freedom of expression.
Amelie Nothomb. First Blood (Anagram)
The Belgian author achieves one of her best books (which is saying something) telling the story of her father, the diplomat Patrick Nothomb, who among other things survived a firing squad in the Congo. On filiation, the ruined aristocracy and passion, through a beautiful story of commissioned love letters that surpasses that of Cyrano de Bergerac himself. It comes out on January 25.
Maggie O'Farrell. The married portrait (Asteroid / L'Altra Editorial)
The Northern Irishwoman, who caused admiration two years ago with her Hamnet, where she portrayed the married and family life of the Bard of Avon -and, above all, that of his wife-, applies her method again (showing the daily reverse of the great characters historical), this time in 16th-century Florence, where we find a teenager, Lucrezia de Medici, forced to marry the disturbing Duke of Ferrara in order to provide him with an heir. It is published on March 13.
Byung-Chul Han. Contemplative life (Taurus / The Pomegranate)
There is a Korean who has the world in his head. His name is Byung-Chul Han and his philosophy dissects the ills of current capitalism like few others. In his new work (January 12, on sale), he explains that our existence is exploited, that is, totally absorbed by activity, and that we have lost the ability to do nothing. Since we only perceive life in terms of performance and are unable to see the benefits of inactivity, he proposes an alternative that includes contemplative moments.
Maryse Conde. The Gospel of the New World (Impedimenta)
The Antilles, a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, draws here (January 16) the adventures of a kind of mestizo Jesus Christ, who is born in Martinique without knowing who his parents were and who, as an adult, seems to be performs mighty miracles. He is not so clear and sees himself as a prophet without a message in a colorful and racist colonial world.
Annie Ernaux. El hombre joven (Cabaret Voltaire / Angle)
The most recent Nobel Prize continues to explore –March 8– the depths of autobiographical fiction. Here, in line with Pura pasión -where she narrated her clandestine idyll with a Soviet diplomat-, she recounts in the first person the relationship she had with a boy thirty years younger than her, which allowed her, on the one hand, to feel again scandalous, as in his youth, and on the other, taking a giant step forward in his literary work. These things happen.
John Boyne. All broken pieces (Salamander / Empúries)
Seventeen years have passed since The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and its author has considered that it was a good time, after another fifteen novels –several of them notable and of very diverse registers–, for a second part of his global megahit. In this sequel, a 91-year-old woman living in London hides a secret from the past, which she may have to reveal in order to help a child. Will she be able to match the tremendous spoiler of the first? We will know on March 2.
Marc-Uwe Kling. Qualityland 2.0 (Tusquets)
We still laugh when we remember scenes from the first Qualityland, which had the bad luck of being published just as the pandemic broke out and bookstores closed. Its author draws a hilarious dystopia in which artificial intelligence and the algorithm dominate everything, not only our itineraries to go to a place but the partner we choose or the job. A world in which we are all classified and ranked according to the likes that others give us. Here (February 2) we see the protagonist in his new job as a machine therapist. In case he still doubted someone about the existence of German humor.
Ottessa Moshfegh. Lapvona (Alfaguara / Angle)
The great revelation of recent American literature is this Bostonian of Croatian and Persian origin, whom we discover here with her third novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) – the odyssey of a girl who locks herself in her apartment for a year Manhattan with no company but modern drugs and old movies. She now takes us to the Middle Ages, with the story of Marek, a very poor, lame and deformed boy dominated by his violent father who, things in life (or witchcraft), will rise socially to the aristocracy. With Moshfegh, that typical phrase of the webs to make us click was never truer: what they are going to read will surprise them. Plus, it's coming soon: January 19th.
Andrei Kurkov. Samson and Nadezhda (Alfaguara)
Among the avalanche of Ukrainian news, we highlight the new novel by Kurkov, the author of Death with a Penguin, surely the most acclaimed writer from such a punished country. Here he creates a sort of Sherlock Holmes in the chaotic Kyiv of 1919, when the Bolsheviks took control and robberies and murders took place on a daily basis. The protagonist, Samson Kolechko – earless due to the anger of the Cossacks – is the head of the Soviet police and tries to solve cases. One of them leads him into the arms of a passionate Bolshevik. He leaves on February 9.
Mario Vargas Llosa. A barbarian in Paris (Alfaguara)
The Peruvian Nobel Prize winner will enter, on February 9, the Olympus of French culture, the Académie Française and, a few days later, on the 23rd of that same month, this book will come out that includes various texts on his relationship with the culture of that country, from his readings of Flaubert, Camus or Revel to his lively years of youth in Paris, where he worked as a journalist on the radio. Reading to him is a good way to forget –or complement– what they say about him in heart programs.
Laura Ferrero. The Astronauts (Alfaguara)
Those who still do not know this brilliant and subtle author from Barcelona can get hold of her previous works until her new novel, about a peculiar family, goes on sale on March 30. “I had a family, but no one had told me,” says the narrator, determined to interview her mother, her father and their respective partners at length to find out for what strange reason the vestiges of their past together have disappeared.
Fernando Aramburu. Children of the fable (Tusquets)
Aramburu returns, one of those authors who needs no introduction. And he returns to the Basque Country of terrorism, specifically to the year 2011, when Asier and Joseba go very determined to the south of France to become ETA militants but, while they wait for them to contact them, they hide in a chicken farm , they find out that the armed struggle has ended... so they decide to set up a terrorist organization, in their own way. What in Patria was tragedy here becomes comedy. Appears on February 1.
Ignatius Martinez of Pison. Castles of Fire (Six Barrel)
Another great of Spanish letters publishes (February 15) a novelty, in this case a choral novel set in Madrid in the immediate postwar period, shaken by hunger, poverty and black marketeering. Cross stories of ordinary characters, both winners and losers, such as a movie box office girl who loses her job for following her heart or a Falangist who traffics in confiscated objects.
Jon Bilbao. Spider (Impedimenta)
This western is published on February 6 where the author recovers the gunman John Dunbar Basilisk, who now guides a group of enlightened pilgrims across the US in search of a paradise reserved only for men. In the present, we find Jon himself, the writer who narrated the exploits of Basilisk, trying to bring order to his life after getting divorced.
Jaime Bayly. Geniuses (Gutenberg Galaxy)
Although camouflaged behind the cover of fiction, the Peruvian author surprises with this proposal (March 22) in which he narrates the disagreement between two of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, symbolized in the punch that the The second struck the first in a packed movie theater in Mexico in 1976. What happened between them? And between them and their wives? What does Bayly know about all this?
Alvaro Pombo. Santander, 1936 (Anagram)
The Cantabrian author returns to the publishing house that launched him to fame, with this novel very much based on real events, since in it he recreates the drama of his uncle, Álvaro Pombo Caller, who joined the Falange at a very young age and was taken prisoner in the ship Alfonso Pérez as soon as the Civil War began. Portrait of a time and events that marked (for bad) several generations.
Maria Elena Moran. Back to when (Siruela)
This work, winner of the Café Gijón award, portrays the great collapse –moral and material– of post-Chavista Venezuela through the personal history of its protagonists, Nina and Camilo, who get divorced. Nina goes to Brazil, leaving her daughter Elisa with her grandmother, and Camilo reappears to stay with her. It looks like a dystopia but it is realistic. A name to add to that of great authors such as Rodrigo Blanco Calderón or Karina Sainz Borgo.
Juarma. Punk (Blackie Books)
Cristina Morales defined the author's first novel, In the end the monsters always win (2021), as "Trainspotting in a town in Granada". Now arrives (February 22) the second installment of the narrative cycle of Villa de la Fuente, in this case the love story between Álex and Paula, who have known each other since they were children and dream of fleeing their town and all its ugliness and pain .
Elvira Navarro. Adriana's voices (Random House)
Adriana, the protagonist, spies on the lives of others on social networks and occasionally uses a dating app for herself. Her life changes when she sees several loved ones disappear while she takes care of her sick father.
Miquel de Palol Boots (Navona)
A monumental novel that wants to be an allegory about the destiny of humanity and a metaphor about the cruelty of power and the injustices of society. Palol plays with the form and the narrative voice to break conventions in a novel that he wrote years ago but was unable to publish. In it, Artur goes to a labyrinthine and fortified city-building to carry out an important confidential task together with a brotherhood. It comes out on January 30 (also in Spanish, Boötes).
Marta Orriols. The possibility to call it home (Proa)
In her first work after leaving the publishing house that saw her born as an author, Periscopi, Orriols novels the return to Barcelona of a correspondent after twenty years abroad. Already in the town where she grew up, she will rediscover her past, the remote and the recent, and she will have to face the present. On January 11, she arrives at bookstores (also in Spanish, That place we call home).
Imma Monsó The teacher and the beast (Anagram)
A young teacher reaches her first place, in a school in the Ribagorza Pyrenees, leaving behind a childhood marked by her parents. On February 22 (also in Spanish, The teacher and the beast). In addition, this January the Compactes collection recovers its titles Tot un caràcter and Un home de paraula.
Raul Garrigasait. Prophecy (1984 Editions)
Through the figure of a father fascinated by untamed beasts and a daughter attracted by ancient stories of prophets, the new novel by the wise man from Solsona speaks of the fecund force that exists in things that we do not control. With a dark atmosphere suffused with a sense of humor and energy. In bookstores on February 1.
Ferran Torrent. Memoirs of Myself (Column)
Despite the title, they are not memoirs but a novel in which, through the journalist Marc Sendra –in some way an alter ego– he investigates a plot about the forgery of art from the late sixties to 2019, and in which we find another of his characters: the Mythical Regino, here before earning his name. On February 8 (also in Spanish, Memories of myself, in Destino).
Eva Piquer. Landing (Club Editor)
A woman begins a brief trip to Iceland that will mark a milestone in a personal recovery process in which her past is mixed with the recent pandemic and the story of a pilot who in 1973 saved his plane from crashing. It is Piquer's first novel in 20 years. February 1.
Enrique Casasses Marramaus (Empúries)
A compendium of short texts that the poet has been writing over the years about the artistic fact: reading and writing, of course, but also painting and music and life in general. It is his first book after receiving the Premi d'Honor de les Letres Catalanes. It comes out on February 22.
Ada Castells Solastalgia (The Other)
Sara, a Quixotic reader, leaves Barcelona to live with her husband and daughter in the Empordà, where they want to re-found the Middle Ages with current technology. There she will have to face solastalgia, the sadness caused by the destruction of the natural environment. February 15.
Lolita Bosch The truth is not written (La Campana)
Bosch brings us closer to the story of Ròmul Bosch i Catarineu, businessman and great art collector, through whom he shows us a face of Barcelona where some citizens are willing to do whatever it takes to not lose power. March 30th.
Jordi Sierra and Fabra. The Past to Come (Universe)
The prolific writer continues his career with two titles in almón. In El passat que vindrà, five characters from post-war Spain are at a crucial moment, among them there is a piano tuner, a film dubber and a member of the National Front of Catalonia who has clandestinely returned to Barcelona, who will enter a spiral of love and violence. Sierra i Fabra also adds the 14th volume of Inspector Miquel Mascarell's series, A few days of April (Rosa dels Vents). Both come out on March 16.
Catalan version, here
