The crime novel in Catalan is going through a good moment like we have never had before,” says Àlex Martín Escribà, who is not only an expert but also directs the Crims collection. cat and has dedicated several books to analyzing it, the latest, Interrogatoris: Gènere negre i memòria (Clandestina), published a few months ago, and in which the author interviews some prominent writers. Now, Martín also clarifies that “we have to separate the wheat from the chaff, we have to be careful and sometimes we need to work more on the manuscripts.” “The crime novel is in good health but without excessive euphoria,” he says.
In addition to its collection, there is the specialized publishing house Llibres del Delicte, which stands out for publishing only Catalan authors to support women writers, such as Anna Carreras, whose three titles have been published, or the collective volume Elles tambo negregen con authors of the stature of Ada Castells, Tina Vallès, Maria Climent or Irene Pujadas, among others. There are also collections in publishers such as Pagès (Lo Marraco Negre) and in generalists, such as Lluís-Anton Baulenas’ last work, Seré el teu mirall (Novel·la Santa Eulàlia prize, Comanegra 2023), without forgetting first swords such as Ferran Torrent and the prolific Jordi Sierra and Fabra.
Martín points out that the trend that has the most momentum today is hybridization, especially with science fiction, as in Anna Maria Villalonga’s latest novel, the futuristic dystopia They still kill horses (La Campana, 2023).
Also important today is the diversification of spaces and the loss of urbanity, says Martín, with outstanding works such as Pigs, by Jordi Santasusagna (VIII Memorial Agustí Vehí prize, Crims. cat, 2021); Butsènit d’Urgell (Xandri, 2022), by Jordi Corbera, or Under the mud (La Magrana, 2023), by Joan Roca Navarro, which open the scene of crimes in the rural environment.
Martín also believes that there is a “fever for real events.” With books like those of the current best-seller Carles Porta or those of Tura Soler and Narcís Bardalet or Fàtima Llambrich. In fact, today, the Tiana Negra festival dedicates the first session to true crime. The festival, a prelude to BCNegra, which will take place from February 5 to 11, will host until Sunday some of the main writers of the genre in Catalan under the direction for another year of Anna Maria Villalonga. “It is important to find a way to create literature beyond the simple chronicle of reconstruction of the events,” says Martín, and he gives the examples of Morts, qui us ha mort? (Comanegra, 2021) by Iñaki Rubio or L’hivern del coiot (Crims. cat, 2020) by Ferran Grau, books that “would have to be worked on even in institutes.”
In fact, Grau has just published a new book, Hiperràbia (Angle Editorial), which is based on real events but goes literary further. Starting from the so-called “ATM crime”, in which three boys killed Rosario Endrinal while she was sleeping in December 2005, the writer pays tribute to A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, not only because of the language he invents – as the writer British does, creates the nadsat – he has created the xeno, which abducted him to the point that he came to dream in this newspeak -, but he gives it a fast-paced rhythm, with many popular references and from Club Súper3 television and changes Beethoven by Andrew Lloyd Weber to turn it into a “futuristic distortion.” “Three quarters of what is explained is real, and there are even things that seem like a tribute to Burgess’s book, like when I talk about reintegration after spending time in prison, and instead it is based on what he has explained to me. one of the perpetrators of the murder,” explains the writer, who got in touch to learn about the events first-hand, and found a person who “condemns what he did and who has tried to move forward.”
The dean of the genre in Catalan, Andreu Martín, neither leaves the city nor adds science fiction or real events – except if they are part of a historical setting – but, on the other hand, he does try to make each novel he writes different from the ones he writes. previous ones, although he himself explains that “because of my age –74 years– and the number of books I have written –more than a hundred including children’s and youth works and collaborations– it costs more and more.” Now he has published Allò que només els passa als altres (Crims. cat, in Spanish, What only happens to others, in AlRevés), where he puts himself in the situation of someone who does not belong to the criminal world directly, “because we know that There are corrupt cops, prevaricating judges, thieves and murderers, but we always think that, as the title says, that only happens to others.” In the book “many things happen but his new antihero, a public defender who is going through a bad time, is seen from afar, a bit like it would happen to many of us.” This distance is what cost him the most: “I move well in action and grand guignol, and I even gave up twice, because I wasn’t doing as well as I wanted, I was playing in the opposite field.” For the writer, “although I have not wanted to reflect any specific fact, every novel comes from real events, even imagination, because reality gives us permission to write fiction.” From his vantage point, he remembers that it comes “from the remote times when it was abnormal to write crime novels set in this country,” and with authors “with a complex that” we needed to say that the genre was the best, and it was not true then or now. ”. “Today there are good black books, not so good and frankly bad, that is, cultural normality,” he says, while thinking that it doesn’t matter if it is fashionable or not: “If they do it well, welcome to the club.”
Catalan version, here
