It could be a soccer team or a cobla, but there are eleven publishing houses that each chose a unique book, in depth, published more than two years ago and that didn’t get the attention they deserved. The Comanegra publishing house invites them to the Fira del Llibre Únic for the second year, and it does so at its headquarters, the patio of the old Lehmann factory in Barcelona.
Joan Sala, director of Comanegra, affirms: “The editors complain about the dictatorship of novelties and this appointment is precisely to give value to the book in depth”. His publisher has chosen Secundaris, by Núria Cadenes, a book that narrates the summer of the Barcelona Olympic Games from Turó de la Peira, which was suffering the hardest moment of the aluminosis crisis.
“Like this novel, the chosen books are also secondary, essential for everything to work,” says Alba Cayón, from Comanegra, the year the Games are 30 years old.
Anagrama presented Trace a perimeter, by Cesc Martínez, who also talks about secondary, marginalized people. “Each part of the book is like expanding the circle with a compass,” says publisher Isabel Obiols. Les Males Herbes levaron Tonight don’t talk to anyone, by Josep Sampere, “a scary horror novel,” says Ricard Planas.
The Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, visited the fair and greeted his sister, Núria, editor of L’Avenç, who had chosen La follia d’Almayer, the first novel by Joseph Conrad.
There were also Mr. Lambert, of Sempé (Blackie Books); Brother, by David Chariandy (The Other); All Sonnets, by Shakespeare (Adesiara); A Summer, by Francesc Parcerisas (Quaderns Crema); Lolly Willowes, by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lowercase); Beer at the snooker club, Egyptian Waguih Ghali (Sakhalin); and Moses and Aaron, by Arnold Schönberg (Excerpt). More than 150 bookstores will sell them from Monday with the stamp that makes them unique.
Catalan version, here
