If someone had told Juana Inés de la Cruz or Saint Teresa of Jesús that they would become the big stars of the Frankfurt Fair in 2023, it is possible that they would think that it was a joke, or who knows, a miracle. “Is there already a higher bidder for the nuns’ book?” they ask María Cardona every other day. She is the literary agent that editors at the Buchmesse are looking for the most these days. “I hardly get up from the table and when I do they chase me through the hallways,” she confesses to La Vanguardia.
The reason for this failure is that she is carrying the weight of the negotiations for Convent wisdom (Convent wisdom: how the nuns of the 16th century can save your 21st century life), one of the most sought-after books of the literary meeting. “It has been an unexpected success. More than twenty-five offers have been received in eight countries. In the United States, an auction has been held between seven publishers,” he says before closing a deal with Brazil. “The project was presented last Tuesday and on Thursday, despite it being a holiday, we already had the offer from a German publisher. Since then the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. It seems like people have gone crazy.”
Behind this literary hit, renamed the nun book, the book of the nuns, are Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita, two doctoral students in Hispanic studies who star in the podcast Las hijas de Felipe and who are willing to take not only the industry by storm. audio, but also in the editorial telling the most gruesome and unknown side of monastic life and comparing it with the present.
“As young women of the 21st century, we are able to talk about issues that concern us today by looking at what the novices had written,” advances the representative, who believes that “more and more readers are looking for different and ground-breaking books that go beyond what we know.” we are used to it. Last year it was The Bad Custom, by Alana S. Portero, and this year it was their turn.”
The authors themselves cannot help but be astonished. “What is happening in Frankfurt has us quite perplexed, there is no baroque word that explains this surprise of ours today,” they acknowledge.
Garriga and Urbita became inseparable at Brown University, in Providence (USA). They had already met in high school but it was not until then that they began to get together and propose projects together. The pandemic just pushed them completely. “They were alone in Rhode Island and wanted to return to Madrid with their families, but they couldn’t because of the confinement. Then it occurs to them to make the podcast. What they couldn’t imagine was that he was going to succeed at these levels,” says Cardona.
The program, which they began recording in the bathroom at home, is now under the umbrella of the Podium platform and can also be heard on Spotify, where it is gradually rising in the favorites ranking. “Historical gossip, baroque dramas, forgotten lives. Nuns, demons, lies, alchemy, recipe books, gold. Two Siamese friends recovering for you the bling bling of the 16th and 17th centuries and connecting it to this busy present,” reads her synopsis. In their first chapter, they already launch a declaration of intentions that remains in the book: “the authentic transversality of Spain is in the convents.”
A bet that was intended to be a minority but that soon captivated both listeners and the book world. In Spain, Blackie Books will publish the book. The publisher itself, which is behind the project and which has taken it to Frankfurt to internationalize it, has confirmed it on social media, where it shows its satisfaction for having contributed to making the project “an international phenomenon in just one week.” “It has been the big surprise.”
Cardona believes that a large part of their success lies in the fact that “they have made history something palatable. When you listen to the podcast you feel like you are learning. They explain everything in a very rigorous way, we must not forget that they are academics specialized in the 16th and 16th centuries. People don’t have time and the little they have wants to feel like they’re making the most of it. In the book they have the opportunity to develop these and other topics more broadly. “I am convinced that it will not disappoint.”
