"Top 10 neglected books about the Spanish Civil War"

 

 The Guardian recently published an article by Sarah Watling with [arguably] lesser-known books about the Spanish Civil War that are available in English. 

Literary Rambles blog recommends the ones by Rukeyser, Cercas, Laforet and Rodoreda.

"Donald Trump doesn't like to read" [but some of the rest of us do...]

In a period of weeks where blind ignorance and Islamaphobia have been tragically demonstrated around the globe, it's apparent that the act of reading (and here I don't mean skimming racist Tweets) is more important than ever but some of the most powerful people are against it...

"The Trump statement [in the blogpost title] was used in an ad campaign ("World, stay awake") by the German bookstore chain "Thalia" to attract attention; according to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, it is true (cf. The Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2018).

The publisher Jordi Nadal used the same slogan for the title of an op-ed piece published in La Vanguardia newspaper in which he gave good reasons for reading, of which some excerpts read as follows:

[...] reading is growing, is feeding curiosity, is giving our minds and emotions more circuits and ressources. The biggest difference between the mind of a child educated in a rich family and that of poor one lies in the words he/she knows. A poor mind doesn't have words. A rich mind has got a universe of words that, in turn, combined and made their own, turn into the master key that will open a good part of the doors and situations present along life.

Juan José Millás reminded us that reality is made of words, which means who dominates words dominates reality. Thus, we consider it an absolute gift to have discovered books and reading. For very many reasons: we can read, because we want to feed our curiosity, because we want to grow, because we want to evade ourselves [?], because we want to understand other things and other people and cultures, because we want to listen to other lives.

[...] Without reading there is no depth of field, nor contrast, nor nuances. Without reading we easily fall into fanatism. You know, a fanatic is the one who doesn't want to change neither the topic nor the opinion. Fanatics read little or badly. Without reading, there triumph naturally the tweet and hate.

What is more, reading is healing and healthy. Reading --every day there are more scientific studies that avail it-- is good for your health. Readers on average live two years more.

Reading is a clean way of enjoying life. Enjoying it as a superior form of research to learn to govern a little better, with humility and gratitude, a life that's one's own in freedom. A PISA study revealed that, beyond the indicators of place, country, etc. and levels of reading competence, a home with less than 20 books is a reliable indicator of a more than nearly assured school failure, and, on the other hand, a home with more than 200 books is a near guarantee for academic success.

[...] Every reader has got the unique and non-transferable opportunity to be the master of a world when he/she dives into the intimacy of reading, and, as was said masterfully by the great author C.S. Lewis [at least in William Nicholson's Shadowlands]: "We read to know we are not alone."

Another statement [from] the Thalia campaign: "The world has got more secrets than those known by Siri."

SOURCE: La Vanguardia, Feb. 2, 2019, p. 26 [printed edition]; horizont.net [images]

Found at Literary Rambles here.

A new "book town" in Catalonia: Calonge

 

"Calonge, a small town on the Costa Brava (Wikipedia), aspires to become an official member of the International Organisation of Book Towns (official website), and thus attract sustainable culture tourism to its medieval center.

 The local culture councilor was inspired by Montolieu in France.

With this aim in mind the local government offered empty spaces to potential booksellers, and after a relatively short selection process, on 10 Dec. 2021 seven new bookstores were officially inaugurated in a town of 10,000 inhabitants.

Some of these are specialized ones, such as Calonge Còmics, La Viatgeria (travel), Orient (the East, classics, Africa), Llibooks (children), and Cocollona (spirituality, esoterica). 

What’s missing of the original concept of book town are the second-hand shops – with online stores without physical outlets dominating the market and the Spanish and Catalan booksale volumes being relatively low, these might be even more difficult to set up and operate profitably than regular bookstores."

SOURCE: La Vanguardia, 11 Dec. 2021, pp. 38 – 39 [printed edition; online with pictures]            Found at Literary Rambles here.

Aymerich’s “The tourist factory” [New release, 2021]

"Ramon Aymerich, La fábrica de turistes. El país que va canviar la indústria pel turisme [The tourist factory: the country that traded industry for tourism], 2021, 149 p.

publisher’s summary:

Catalonia is no longer a country of industry, but one of tourists.

The day that Barcelona was left without tourists [2020, Covid-19] felt strange to the locals, they were so used to them. 

During the last 60 years, tourism has changed the country’s appearance. 

It has urbanized half of the country, has damaged natural ressources, has transformed the economy and has created a lot of jobs… temporary jobs. Part of Catalonia’s identity was made up of industry, and now it is a country that fabricates tourists. During the pandemic we have discovered the cost of this bet, now full of uncertainties.

La fàbrica de turistes covers the creation of the myth of the Costa Brava, the birth of Port Aventura [amusement park], and the appearance of Barcelona as a big international tourist destination… and it stresses the urgency of finding a plan B for its economy."

Above text from Literary Rambles here.

"A posthumous story collection by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2020)"

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, La Ciudad de Vapor. Todos los cuentos [The city of steam: all the stories], 2020, 224 pages.

Publisher’s summary: (from Literary Rambles blog)

Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived this work as a recognition of his readers who had followed him along the saga begun with The Shadow of the Wind.

«I can conjure the faces of the kids of the Ribera neighborhood with whom I sometimes played or fought in the street, but none which I would like to rescue from the land of indifference. None but that of Blanca.»

A boy decides to become a writer when he finds out that his inventions give him a few moments more with a rich girl who has stolen his heart. An architect flees from Constantinople with the plans of an unassailable library. A strange knight challenges Cervantes to write a book as has never existed before. And Gaudí, navegating to a mysterious meeting in New York, delights in light and steam, the matter cities should be made of.

The echo of the great characters and motives of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books novels resonates in theses stories by Carlos Ruiz Zafón –gathered together for the first time, and some of them unpublished so far– turning on the magic of the narrator who made us dream like nobody else.

One of the most popular posts on this blog is on a book by Ruiz Zafón: Labyrinth of Spirits (2016).

The Guardian offers an obituary (June 2020), in case you are unfamiliar with this author."

SOURCE: Planeta (publisher)

"Women Writers in Catalan"

"This is a catalogue with a selection of 50 contemporary and ten classic women writers...

Written in English, with the exception of the literary samples by each author, with the English translation and the original Catalan text, it's book to discover Catalan literature written by women, prose and poetry, classic and contemporary. 

A book to help getting to know and understanding Catalan literature and some of the women who have helped to create and construct it. "

Read more from source here.

"The Empty Womb: the tale of a precarious and childless generation"

 "I often ask my friends how they see themselves ten years from now. We know what we will do next week, but not in three months. Will I have a job? Will I have a home? Will I have met somebody? 

The capacity to predict our own lives doesn’t exist, because the precariousness has dynamited the possibility of visualising our future. 

The dynamics have been configured to make everything last only a short time: buy that which you will eat for dinner tonight, we will see what it will be tomorrow; maybe in one month you won’t have a job; remember that next year your rental contract will end. 

The uncertainty generated by the crisis [of/since 2008] has not only rocked our expectations, but also our most primitive certainties; those that I thought would always exist even when I didn’t have anything material to hang on to: a child, for example. A panorama that doesn’t allow anything but short-term thinking, pure survival. A scenario in which to think about having children causes panic. But not having them, if you desire to, also causes panic. 

This book deals with putting off having children in the generation of the 25 to 35 year olds. Also about those who when they were about to have a child, they lost their jobs. It reflects on the fear of having children and on the fear of not ever having them. A collective tale that talks about how our bodies have been crossed by precariousness. And about putting it all off until we don’t know when."


Above is the publisher's summary of Noemí López Trujillo's, El vientre vacío. Relato de una generación precaria y sin hijos [The empty womb: the tale of a precarious and childless generation], 2019.

Source: an excellent blog on Spanish and Portugese literature: Literary Rambles.

"Catalan book week in Barcelona (Sept. 6 – 15)"

[(c) llull.cat]

"A week of literary events and book selling at the heart of Barcelona, next to its Cathedral (no, not La Sagrada Família…). 

The official website is Catalan only, but as you can see from the picture, there is also a stall dedicated to translations from Catalan. At the same time there is held a foreign-rights market with 18 publishers and agents from 16 different countries..."

SOURCE: Literary Rambles here [from Institut Ramon Llull (Catalan Language and Culture promotion)]

Latest review on 'Slow Travels in Unsung Spain'

[Photo: Cornelia Kraft]

"...This is a book for readers interested in areas beyond the coasts and in small glimpses on the reality of daily life in Spain.

The author uses a personal style to give the readers an insight into different places...and culture, similar in style to articles of  The New Yorker..."


Read more from source at Literary Rambles blog.

A Very Brief History of Ladino Literature/ Manuel Forcano’s “Catalan Jews”

"The Sephardi Jews who settled in the Ottoman empire created a rich and varied literature in Ladino—their own dialect of Spanish written in Hebrew characters. Avner Perez traces the history of this literature and its connection to contemporary Spanish literature:

For a long time, researchers thought that literary creation in Ladino had only begun in the first third of the 18th century. Material discovered in recent years has given us a completely different picture. The intellectual elite of the exiled Jews spoke a [uniquely Jewish] dialect, but was still part of the Hispanic world and used literary Castilian in its literary creations. What set [the language of these works] apart [from standard Castilian Spanish] was its use of Hebrew characters as well as the presence of other [distinctive Ladino features].

Three pieces of classical theater in Judeo-Spanish printed in Hebrew characters, dating back to the end of the 16th century, have come down to us. They were the first such pieces printed in Hebrew characters. Two of them, Aquilana, by Bartolome de Torres Navarro (1480-1530), and Tragedia Josephina, by Micael de Carvajal (who died in 1578), are pieces of Spanish classical theater [rendered into an early form of Ladino]. The third, Ma’aseh Yosef (“Joseph’s Tale”), . . . is an original work. All this shows that the intelligentsia that descended from exiles from Spain had a rich cultural life. The channels through which they received the Spanish Renaissance culture were still open.”  [Source: Mosaic.]

                                               

Read more at eSefarad    

Manuel Forcano launched his new book last week...

"(Barcelona, 1968; philologist, poet, translator), Els jueus catalans. La història que mai no t’han explicat. [The Catalan Jews: the history they never told you], 384 pages.

The publisher’s summary:

This book gives an overview of the history of Jews in Catalonia, from the first mentioning to the current Jewish communities. When they arrived, where they settled, how they lived, who persecuted them and for which reasons, how they survived the attacks, where and how they prayed, how they organized themselves, which figures led them, what of them has survived, what they wrote and if they did so in Hebrew or Catalan – these are some of the questions that the book answers in an informative and entertaining way. During their century-long presence in Catalonia, from the Jewish communities arose geographers, grammaticians, physicians, poets, philosophers, theologians and kabbalists of enormous prestige, even today venerated in the Jewish world, but unfortunately hardly known in Catalonia.”

Read more from source, Literary Rambles blog here.

                   

"Literary rambles" through Iberian books

Literary rambles is a good quality English language blogsite that focuses on recent releases and news from the world of books across Spain and Portugal.

"BCNegra" - Crime fiction week in Barcelona

Personally, I think there is too much violence in modern fiction (and maybe it has always been this way) but I also realise that there is some quality writing to be found in books that use murder (as an easy way) to create suspense - Ian Rankin comes to mind.

From today, Barcelona is hosting "BCNegra" (Black Barcelona) or crime fiction week. According to the highly informative blog Literary Rambles: "This year’s star is Andrea Camilleri who will be awarded with the Pepe Carvalho prize. The program is in Catalan and [Castillian] Spanish, but as there are international authors coming, one will also hear some English."