The return of summer is coming strong, with the Setmana del Llibre en Català (from September 8 to 17) as a great beacon, and some editorial bets land in bookstores already at the end of August. This year, in addition, some of the most outstanding novelties are storybooks. This is the case, for example, of the new short story collections by Sergi Pàmies, Carlota Gurt and Damià Bardera, but also of premieres such as Roser Vernet, with one foot in the Priorat landscape and the other in subtle fiction, or Joan Enric Barcelo.
There will also be novels such as those by Marta Marín-Dòmine, winner of the Sant Joan BBVA prize; a new inquiry by Lolita Bosch about her family; historical novels by Xavier Theros or Núria Cadenes, the return of Iolanda Batallé or a memoir by Raimon.
And a discovery: the first novel, unpublished, by Maria Antònia Oliver.
In his new book of short stories, Pàmies builds a literary device that brings together doses of fiction and non-fiction. Anecdotes from childhood and youth, past and recent trips, either as stories or as chronicles –even imagined– to try to find the meaning of time. August 30th
After having captivated readers first with the stories of Cavalcarem tota la nit and the novel Sola, which he wrote at the same time, Gurt returns to the short story with a compilation that delves into his own identity and relationships. August 30th
Activist for Priorat and always with one foot in literature, Roser Vernet’s first literary book includes a set of prose on the border between essay and short story, claiming an elemental landscape –earth, water, air and fire– and also linguistic. August 30th
After the surprise of her first novel, Fugir era el més bell que teníem (Club Editor, 2019), where she dialogued with paternal memory, the current director of the Born Center for Culture and Memory portrays a complex daughter-mother relationship that is based in your own. The novel, which won the BBVA Sant Joan prize, calls for acceptance, but also for oblivion. August 30th
Gris has just gotten divorced, and his father has died, he has no job and is adrift, and tries to get ahead by reversing the journey that his grandfather undertook in 1939. Thus, he returns from Mexico to Catalonia, where he will end up. to the landscapes that Dalí painted. 4th of September
The member of Els Amics de les Arts makes his debut in written literature with this collection of stories, sometimes linked, which promises to explore the small frustrations that we accumulate during our day to day in a book full of irony. 4th of September
In addition to being a writer, Masó is a musician and he shows it with each book. Here, he signs an epistolary novel inspired by the form of the chaconne –an instrumental piece with variations on a stubborn bass–, a complete experiment in style based on a woman who the day after burying her husband finds a love letter among his belongings. . September 6
The new novel by Márquez inaugurates the collection of Catalan narrative by Alrevés –after Crims.cat moved to the new Clandestina–, an advertising creative from Barcelona, ??after the golden age of the eighties, the first crisis of the nineties and the definitive of 2008, he strives to get ahead as best he can in a precarious world of work when you are already over fifty years old. A generation that seemed to have it all until the house of cards collapsed. 4th of September
After the great success of his debut with Gina, Climent has written a novel in which a mother –with a family secret that will be revealed and will remove everything– and her two daughters, each with very different moods and moments in life, meet They meet again after years of being estranged, in a story narrated in the author’s characteristic Ebrense. September 6
Picasso’s stay in Gósol in 1906, with Fernande Olivier, is gaining more and more importance, to which Rubio dedicates a narrative book that shows us how the artist overcomes an artistic blockage and, transformed into Pau de Gósol, begins the pictorial journey that it will take you to cubism. September 6
Ten years after the previous novel, Batallé takes us to a mountain town where a writer takes refuge to write again and have a bad drink. From there he writes the voices and confessions of the inhabitants of a recovered town and who wants to talk, among other things, about the healing power of literature and the price of being a woman in any society, but even more so in rural ones, without forgetting the transformation of the Pyrenees. September 6
The Roc Boronat Award-winning novel presents a satire of our world where nothing is as it seems and tries to warn of the dangers of idolatry and delusions of transcendence through humorous science fiction in the style of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams . 4th of September
Based on the adventures of a photographer who has to stay longer than expected in Menorca during a commission, out of season she will face herself in an introspective process from which she will emerge refreshed. September 6
A compilation of ten fantastic short stories – with subgenres such as space opera or pulp adventures – around duality, to the point that each story is written by four hands: Ricard Ruiz Garzón and Inés Macpherson, Roser Cabré-Verdiell and Víctor Garcia Tur, Marc Pastor and Isabel del Río, Albert Villaró and Jaume Valor, Ivan Ledesma and Quim Gómez, Mar Bosch and Adrià Pujol, Alícia Gili and Edgar Cotes, M. Mercè Cuartiella and Joan Manuel Soldevilla, Elena Bartomeu and Laura Tomàs, and Enric Herce and Héctor Rivadeneyra Moll. September 12
During the eighties, the singer-songwriter from Xàtiva kept a diary. The selection and review shape a book between experiences, readings or trips in intense years of political turmoil and also disenchantment. September 20
Bosch has written several novels about his family – the last one, La veritat no està escrità. A Barcelona novel, published not yet a year ago, relapses with a tribute to his grandmother based on the memories that his garden arouses in him, which he defines as a “spoken garden”. September 20
Cadenas’ new bet distances itself from Guillem’s non-fiction and collective projects such as Matar el monstre –from Frankenstein– or Temps obert –following in the footsteps of Pedrolo– to delve into history and recreate the lavish Rome of Emperor Tiberius and reflect how absolute power eats away at people from within. 4th of October
If La fada negra (Destino, 2017) placed the action in Barcelona in 1843, his return to the historical thriller began only five years later with a series of crimes in Ripollès carried out by a guerrilla party pursued by Captain Llampades – the protagonist of the previous one, yes–. A plot that will also travel to the Catalan capital that the co-founder of the Accidents Polipoètics knows perfectly well. October 5th
Hardly a year after the collection Bèsties de companyia –Godall Edicions–, Bardera presents a new book of short stories. If then the volume focused on the workplace and education, this time, as the title implies, it explores the territory between the short story and the theater –even theatrical skits that are impossible to represent– without renouncing its own universe. 30th of October
To end this brief selection of novelties for autumn –to which we could add the new books by, for example, Jordi de Manuel, Assumpta Montellà, Elisabet Riera, Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Marc Masdeu, Sílvia Cantos or Bea Cabezas, as well as such as the first novels by Carlota Benet, Òmnia l’Bakkali or Àngels Dalmau, but also the incorporation of Joan Ramis’ theater in the Barcino Essentials collection– we highlight the publication of an unpublished novel by Maria Antònia Oliver, the first she wrote. It is an epistolary narration based on the letters that the writer sent to her partner, Jaume Fuster, when he was exiled in the military in Cabrera: a love story with emotions, longing and anger produced by the separation during the gray sixties . October 19
