It seems to me that I am not revealing anything to you if I say that the great prizes are perhaps no longer part of what we could call literary publishing. Many times we look for a familiar face, with a good story, that the author is not part of the most syrupy literary world, freeing the novel from useless hassles. That said, it is appreciated when a book cut with such a pattern is written with grace and reads with pleasure.

Ramon Gener (Barcelona, ??1967) is a great television broadcaster of music and art, with programs such as Òpera amb texans or This is Art. He also collaborates on the radio and has written books about Beethoven. The theme is good: a piano that passes from one hand to another following the narrative chain of the famous story of a peseta. But more than Gener’s popularity and likeability or the timeliness of the subject, History of a Piano has a good script. So many linear novels are written, so many novels based on a past-present counterpoint, predictable and boring, that when you read a book with an intelligent structure it is greatly appreciated. Gener has not written following a formula or a template, he explains what he sees as he sees it. As soon as we find ourselves in 1914 in Germany, we are on Santa Tecla de Gràcia street. Where the author locates a piano store there is also a computer technician who repairs laptops: it is funny that it is Santa Tecla Street. It was also the street where police chief Bravo Portillo was killed in 1919, but that is another story. Later we are in a trench and then we ride the protagonist’s Vespa Primavera. Story of a piano is a lively and free narrative, not a school exercise.

Another aspect that seems very successful to me is that this piano is hardly played. I saw another Auschwitz violin novel coming. Well no sir. It starts in the First World War and goes to the Second. But he does not try to teach us lessons about the misfortunes of Europe. That is to say: it does tell things. About the war. About solidarity among soldiers in the trenches. About the bonds that are created between men from both sides, which can last a lifetime. An idealized vision of war? Surely. But in the composition that Gener has created, it works, and there is nothing to complain about. The plot twists – when the young pianist has to return home, his mother has bought him a new piano – are neither predictable nor forced. The contemporary plot does not become heavy: the man who investigates Pianos Jorquera and the Grotrian-Steinweg piano factory has the good taste of not telling us his life, nor linking it to the history of European wars, except for the thread What follows: the piano that passes from one to another. The script is really good, with functional and correct writing.

I have to say that I am not a television viewer at all, but if I have ever seen Ramon Gener in action he has seemed like a child who wants to transmit his enthusiasm to the viewers. Carried away by this character, the novel abuses the idea of ??magic, miracle, predestination and destiny. Despite this, it is a worthy Ramon Llull award. Pacifist, culturalist, well scripted. And commercial.