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Books
T
he selection of books reviewed below provides useful background
on the city’s history, people and institutions. Despite a long pedigree,
Catalan literature is hard to find in translation, though novels set in
Barcelona by (mostly foreign) authors provide a feel of the city past
and present. In Barcelona, most of the major
bookshops
(see p.243) carry
English-language guides and titles about the city, or look in the
museum
bookshops
(particularly in MNAC, MACBA, Caixa Forum, Museu Picasso
and Fundació Joan Miró) for books on art, design and architecture.The online
literary magazine
W
www.barcelonareview.comhas plenty in the archive
on Spanish and Catalan writers, art, culture and life, and there’s also the very
useful Lletra (
W
www.lletra.net), an excellent online resource (in English) for
Catalan literature.
History
Barcelona
Jimmy Burns
Barça: A People’s
Passion
. On one level, it’s
simply an informative history of the
city’s famous football team, alma
mater of Cruyff, Lineker, Maradona,
Ronaldinho et al. However, like
the club itself, the book is so much
more than that, as Burns exam-
ines Catalan pride and nationalism
through the prism of sport.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Barcelona:AThousandYears of the City’s
Past
. An expertly written appraisal of
what the author sees as the formative
years of the city’s history, from the
tenth to the early twentieth century.
Robert Hughes
Barcelona
.The
renowned art critic casts his
accomplished eye over two thou-
sand years of Barcelona’s history and
culture, with special emphasis on
the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries – explaining, in his own
words,“the zeitgeist of the place and
the connective tissue between the
cultural icons”.
Matthew Stewart
Monturiol’s
Dream
.Witty and engaging
account of the life and work of Narcís
Monturiol, the nineteenth-century
Catalan utopian visionary, revolu-
tionary and inventor of the world’s
first true submarine. Stewart places
Monturiol firmly at the centre of
Barcelona’s contemporary social and
political turmoil – printing seditious
magazines, manning the barricades
in the 1850s, fleeing into exile and
returning to pursue his pioneering
invention.
Colm Tóibín
Homage to Barcelona
.
Echoing Orwell, the Irish writer pays
his own homage to the city, tracing
Barcelona’s history through its artists,
architects, personalities, organizations
and rulers.
Spain
John Hooper
The New Spaniards
.
Excellent portrait of post-Franco
Spain and the new generation, now
in a second revised edition of 2006
that brings the twenty-first-century
country into focus.
Hugh Thomas
Rivers of Gold:The
Rise of the Spanish Empire
.Thomas’
scholarly but eminently acces-
sible history provides a fascinating
snapshot of Spain’s most glorious
period – the meteoric imperial
CONTEXTS
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Books