If we tread the territory of the authors we call classics, there is a good chance that at some point during the year it will be the opportunity to remember some of them on the occasion of an anniversary. That will happen on June 3, when one hundred years will have passed since the death of the most universal Czech writer, about whom and about whom many works have already appeared.
Thus, we have Franz Kafka’s Letters (Gutenberg Galaxy), from the years 1914-1920; Complete Stories (Foam Pages); Animal Tales (Harp); A hunger artist (Nordic); Stories and aphorisms and Novels (Alianza); in addition to You are the task (Cliff), also of aphorisms; to which is added I Am Milena from Prague (Galaxia Gutenberg), by Monika Zgustova, about the author’s brief girlfriend, and Along the Road by Kafka. Wanderings of K. (Fórcola), by Miguel Ángel Ortiz Albero.
In August, the centenary of the birth of James Baldwin will arrive, from which Giovanni’s Room / L’habitació d’en Giovanni (Sexto Piso / Trotalibros) is recovered, about an American who, while in Paris waiting to meet with Her partner meets a waiter who ruins her wedding plans. Another author with homosexual sensitivity, Marcel Proust, reappears in Combray (Nordic), the town that acts as the gateway to In Search of Lost Time.
A neighboring author whose rights have been released is Stefan Zweig: Complete Stories (Foam Pages), Legends (Harp), Carta d’una discoconeguda (Vienna), Amerigo: La chrònica d’un error històric (1984 Editions ), Amok. Novels of passion (Hermida), The world of yesterday (Alianza)… …
The Austrian author distinguished himself for being a profuse reader of two stars of Russian fiction. We are referring to Fyodor Dostoevsky, from whom The Eternal Husband (Alba) is published, about the problems of a handsome, spendthrift and womanizing man; and Lev Tolstoy, who is enjoying a new edition of Resurrection (Kingdom of Cordelia), in which he wanted to portray a society full of inequalities and prisons. Less known is M. Aguéiev, who hid behind a pseudonym and who went down in history for Novela con cocaine (Alba), an autobiographical novel, set in the Moscow of imminent Revolution: this is the opportunity to meet her for the first time. translated from Russian.
Another writer who exemplifies what was the great narrative of the 19th and early 20th centuries is Charles Dickens, the bait to get a copy of Mugby Junction (The Escape), a collection of humorous stories about trains that has four other collaborators. who published their texts in a magazine’s Christmas special.
Within the French literary context we have Bouvard and Pécuchet (Eternal Cadence), by Gustave Flaubert, with more than 1,500 notes. To which we could add Notre-Dame de Paris (Brau Edicions), by Victor Hugo, the well-known story, set in the 15th century, about an unjust accusation that falls on a gypsy.
In contrast to such authors, who used to publish voluminous plots, we find a representation on the news tables of some others who mastered the short story. We are talking, for example, about Flannery O’Connor, with Un home bo costa de trobar (L’Altra), about the so-called “Gothic narrative of the southern United States”; from his compatriot William Faulkner, of whom we have his Contes (1984 Editions), a total of forty-two that he himself selected; by Alberto Moravia and his Contes romans (Comanegra), with the Italian capital as the common thread; or by Irène Némirovsky, of whom the Complete Stories of Her (Punto de Vista) are published, which portray so much of that Europe of the first half of the 20th century.
Precisely a part of this period of time saw Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1901-1935) live and die, of which Granito gris (Trotalibros) is offered, located in a period of labor movements. Also of a social nature was the work of Upton Sinclair, of whom we can learn, in What Didymus Did (Montesinos), his most satirical facet regarding human nature.
Another great author of those years (he committed suicide in 1911) was Emilio Salgari, from whom we get To the Southern Pole on a Velocipede (Fórcola); He tells how two geographers bet on who will reach the South Pole first. And if we had to continue talking about famous creators, one of them would inevitably be William Shakespeare, of whom two tragedies are brought together in Hamlet/Lear (Anagram).
And to finish, two gems of fascinating women and the best book of advice for writers. On the one hand, La passió segons G.H. (Club Editor), by Clarice Lispector, with a Kafkaesque prism that recalls The Transformation; and on the other, Beauty in Chaos (Satori), by Setouchi Jakucho, a Buddhist nun who tells the life of a pioneer of feminism and anarchism. All of these authors could agree with what Ernest Hemingway says in About Writing (Elba), a set of recommendations extracted from his letters, interviews and stories, all completely illuminating.
