296 / 344
286
touch to an unusual amorous entan-
glement in 1950s Barcelona.
Manuel Vasquez Montalban
Murder in the Central Committee
,
Southern Seas
,
The Angst-Ridden
Executive
,
An Olympic Death
,
Offside
,
The Man of My Life
and
Tatoo
.
Montalban’s greatest creation, the
fast-living gourmand-detective
Pepe Carvalho, ex-communist and
CIA agent, first appeared in print
in 1972, investigating foul deeds in
the city in a series of wry and racy
Chandleresque thrillers.
Murder in
the Central Committee
is a good place
to start, as Carvalho confronts his
communist past.
Southern Seas
won
the Planeta, Spain’s biggest liter-
ary prize, while the city’s businesses,
institutions and events come under
typical scrutiny in
The Angst-Ridden
Executive
,
An Olympic Death
and
Offside
.Twenty-first-century Catalan
politics and business comes under the
spotlight in the last Carvalho novel,
The Man of My Life
, while the early
Tatoo
, published for the first time in
English (2008), plunges you right
back into “sex, death and food in
1970s Barcelona”.
Raul Nuñez
The Lonely Hearts Club
.
A parade of grotesque and hard-
bitten characters haunt the city in
this oddball but likeable romantic
comedy.
Colm Tóibín
The South
. Barcelona
provides the background for Tóibín’s
first novel about an Irish woman
looking for a new life.
Barbara Ellen Wilson
Gaudí
Afternoon
. Pacy feminist thriller
making good use of Gaudí’s archi-
tecture as a backdrop for deception
and skulduggery.
Carlos Ruiz Záfon
The
Shadow of the Wind
.Top holiday
read is the international bestseller
by the Barcelona-born, one-time
LA screenwriter Záfon. It’s a Gothic
literary thriller set in the aftermath
of the Civil War, full of atmospheric
Barcelona locations, and it generated
rave reviews, not to mention selling
over ten million copies worldwide.
Its follow-up, a prequel called
The
Angel’s Game
, is due in translation
in 2009.
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