295 / 344
285
picaresque classic – in the Barcelona
chapters, Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza see the ocean for the first
time, while Quixote fights a duel on
Barceloneta beach against the Knight
of the White Moon.
Ildefonso Falcones
Cathedral of
the Sea
. Falcones, a lawyer living in
Barcelona, sets his first novel in the
expansionist years of the fourteenth
century, where work is underway
on the building of the city’s most
magnificent church, Santa María
del Mar. It’s a highly realistic, excit-
ingly plotted tale that lifts the skirts
of medieval Barcelona to show
an authentic picture of a city on
the make. It was a Spanish award-
winner on publication and has
become something of a publishing
sensation, in the manner of
The
Shadow of the Wind
– you’ll see
it piled high in bookshops across
the city.
Juan Marse
Lizard Tails
and
Shang-
hai Nights
. Marse spent his forma-
tive years in a Barcelona scarred by
Civil War, and ruptured childhood
and family hardship are themes that
emerge in much of his work. Only
a couple of works have thus far
been translated into English:
Lizard
Tails
is an evocation of post-Civil
War childhood, while
Shanghai
Nights
– again, Barcelona and war
to the fore – is billed as “a tale of
the human spirit”.
Eduardo Mendoza
City of
Marvels
,
The Truth About the
Savolta Case
and
TheYear of the Flood
.
Mendoza’s first and best novel,
City
of Marvels
, is set in the expanding
Barcelona of 1880–1920, full of rich
underworld characters and riddled
with anarchic and comic turns.The
milieu is reused with flair in
The
Truth About the Savolta Case
, while
TheYear of the Flood
adds a light
and Marrakesh – with his great trilogy (
Marks of Identity
,
Count Julian
and
Juan
the Landless
) confronting the whole ambivalent idea of Spain and Spanishness.
Other notable exiles included
Pere Calders i Rossinyol
(1912–94), best known
for his short stories, and
Mercè Rodoreda i Gurgui
(1909–83), whose
Plaça del
Diamant
(
The Time of Doves
),
El Carrer de les Camèlies
(
Camellia Street
) and
La
Meva Cristina i Altres Contes
(
My Cristina and Other Tales
) are relatively easily
found in translation. For something lighter, there are the works of
Maria Antònia
Oliver i Cabrer
(born 1946), novelist, children’s author and short-story writer born
in Mallorca, whose early novels were influenced by her birthplace, but whose
Estudi en Lila
(
Study in Lilac
) and
Antipodes
introduce fictional Barcelona private
eye Lonia Guiu.
Not all Catalan writers write in Catalan, but rather in Spanish, including perhaps
the best-known of all –
Manuel Vasquez Montalban
(1939–2003), crime writer
par excellence
, and novelist, poet, journalist, political commentator and commit-
ted communist to boot. His Pepe Carvalho books do nothing less than expose the
shortcomings of the new Spanish democracy in fast-changing Barcelona. Montal-
ban’s contemporary
Juan Marse
(born 1933) uses the post-Civil War dictatorship as
the background for many of his Barcelona-set novels, and it’s the same period that
spawned the Barcelona blockbuster
The Shadow of the Wind
by
Carlos Ruiz Záfon
(born Barcelona, 1964), and its prequel
The Angel’s Game
. For other new Catalan
writers, such as
Albert Sánchez Piñol
(born Barcelona, 1965), nationality seems
incidental at best – his well-regarded first novel,
Cold Skin
, is a creepy psychological
sci-fi, tale of solitude on an Antarctic island where something stirs as soon as the
sun goes down. His latest novel,
Pandora in the Congo
, is a highly original literary
adventure story that starts in the dark heart of the African jungle.
CONTEXTS
|
Books