For publishers, bringing foreign authors for Sant Jordi is a bit like when you buy a flat and you can't wait to invite friends and give them some beers and a little fuet. Look at this recovered hydraulic tile. Look how capable the Ikea closet turned out to be, you go there and they design it for you in 3D.
Is there anything more attractive to show to that firm that you signed up for your catalog than in this territory we call Catalonia where once a year we stop by the cities to buy books, including those by the guest author?
This year there have been many and varied foreign authors imported for Sant Jordi, at the same level as the editions just before the pandemic. Starting with the preacher, the best-selling author David Walliams, who in his message defended children's and youth books that are not necessarily educational. “Children always want to read something that is prohibited, that carries a torch of danger, that is for older children. That's why I try to have murders and things like that in my books.” One of his latest titles – since his first success in 2008, The Boy in the Dress, based on his own experiences as a boy who liked to dress up as a girl, he has published 34 books – recreates The Shining.
On Sant Jordi's day, Walliams got tired of signing not only copies of The Gangster Grandma (Montena) or The Incredible Story of Perrobot (Montena), but also DVDs of Little Britain, the series that made him famous as an actor before moving to youth literature. Few fans are as dedicated as Luca Titos Flores, the ten-year-old boy, who came to see him at Casa Seat and bring him chorizo as a gift. The boy traveled expressly to Barcelona from Madrid, where he was also at an event with Walliams. “It has been an extraordinary day – he said, after completing all his signatures – not only for witnessing this atmosphere in the streets and two things that I love, books and roses. Also because so many children have come. I knew that my books worked in Spain but I didn't imagine how much. “I am delighted to have been a small part of this incredible party.”
María Larrea, the French writer and author of Those from Bilbao are born where they want (Alianza) also had intense encounters with readers: “Adopted people, people who want to adopt, people from Bilbao…”. In her book, she starts from her own experience of discovering as an adult that her parents, Basque emigrants in Paris, were not her biological parents, and she narrates her reunion with the woman who gesture. Larrea started her day on the right foot. “I walked down Rambla Catalunya from my hotel, seeing teenagers buying roses to give as gifts. At my first signing, I had Eduardo Mendoza on my right, surrounded by cameras and photos, a total rockstar from Barcelona, and on my left was Hernán Díaz, the Pulitzer Prize winner. Chatting for an hour with him has been divine and we discovered that 12 years ago we were at the same wedding in Italy. “This is a unique phenomenon in the world, an entire city involved with literature,” she admired herself.
Díaz, his signature neighbor, arrived thanks to his two labels, Anagrama, which published his Fortuna in Spanish, and Periscopi, which published it in Catalan. The novel, a story of ambition and marriage told in four voices that fit together like a puzzle, climbed to the top of almost all the lists of best books last year and many of those who came for its signature knew it. This was the case of Maria Àngels Lujano, a reader from Lleida who usually takes the day off and travels to Barcelona to find authors that interest her. “It is an unforgettable experience to see a city so happily taken over by readers, booksellers and writer friends,” noted the Argentine author. Fortuna is in the process of becoming a very high-budget series, produced by and starring Kate Winslet – both of them were recently photographed by paparazzi leaving lunch, which took Díaz to a place not frequented by Pulitzer winners: the gossip vertical from the Daily Mail.
Another foreign novelist present at Sant Jordi already knows what it's like to see her novel adapted to the screen, in her case with Brie Larson as the protagonist. Bonnie Garmus, the author of Chemistry Lessons (Salamandra), seemed delighted with the plan: “it is my first Sant Jordi and I hope it is not the last. Every city should have that. I have never seen anything like it in my life and it is the best thing to do. "I didn't expect something like this, you have to come and experience it to understand what it is." A reader came to look for her signature with her dog and assured her that she planned to change the animal's name and name it Six and a Half, like the dog in the novel. According to Garmus, the canine did not seem very convinced.
Also very pleased with the experience was Won Pyung Sohn, the Korean author of Almendra (Today's Issues), a classic coming-of-age novel starring a teenager, Yunjae, who has been told that his brain's tonsils are smaller than an almond. “It is very impressive to see this, so many people in the street. The interesting thing about this party is that it has a story, a princess, a dragon, a prince and books, all combined,” she said during her lunch break.
As all those authors have surely informed, Sant Jordi is not just a festival of roses and dragons, it is also a fundamental business for the publishing sector, the day on which one in every three books shipped in Catalonia is sold. throughout the year. This also attracts industry bosses to Barcelona, who are interested in observing this curious phenomenon of sales concentration. Tamblyn, the CEO of Rakuten-Kobo, one of the key players in the audiobook sector, saw it up close for the first time: “I've spent a lot of time working in the publishing industry and I haven't seen anything like it. You always wonder if people still care about the written word and seeing the streets of Barcelona has made me think so. I had never felt anything like this, the experience of walking through the streets, full of stops and authors signing books.” His particular epiphany had to do, of course, with the oral. “I watched people in the audience read Don Quixote aloud, fragment by fragment, the perfect illustration of how to bring a book to life.” The audio has not yet scratched the book written as much of the business segment by Sant Jordi, but there are already people like Tamblyn making plans in this regard.
