The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Mendoza‘s El misterio de la cripta embrujada (Mystery of the Enchanted Crypt). The novel, Mendoza’s second, is nominally a detective story. However, the detective is a homeless man who is on (temporary) release from a mental hospital. Under orders from the police, he is investigating the temporary … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Mendoza‘s La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (The Truth about the Savolta Case). This novel, Mendoza’s first, is set in Barcelona between 1917 and 1920. The eponymous Savolta is the name of a family and the Barcelona armaments factory they own. Paul-André Lepprince, a seemingly rich and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Manuel Vilas‘ Ordesa. This book has had considerable success in Spain, both commercially and critically. It is essentially autobiographical, a tale recounted by Vilas after his divorce, in which he examines the lives of his parents, of himself and of his sons and links the events and circumstances … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Germán Sierra‘s The Artifact. Sierra is a Spanish neuroscientist but this book was written in English, though his previous novels were written in Spanish. It is essentially a novel and treatise on the future of the species, dealing with artificial intelligence, quasi-life forms, new technologies and how we … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fernando Aramburu‘s Patria (Homeland). This book has been hugely successful in Spain and has been translated into several languages and will appear in English in March 2019. It tells the story of two Basque families. In one, the father, Txato, is murdered by ETA, the Basque separatist group … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Miklós Szentkuthy‘s Eszkoriál [Escorial]. This book follows the life of Francis Borgia, descendant of those Borgias, later Director-General of the Society of Jesus and canonised nearly a hundred years after his death. He had a colourful life and Szentkuthy inevitably makes it more colourful, while being critical of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Javier Marías‘ Berta Isla. This is, in my view, by far his masterpiece. It tells the story of Tomás, half-English, half-Spanish, with a gift for languages and the eponymous Berta Isla. They meet and fall in love in Madrid. Tomás goes to university in Oxford, while Berta stays … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Vila-Matas‘ Mac y su contratiempo [Mac and His Problem]. Mac is a bankrupt builder who plans to rewrite the (very poor) novel, in the form of interrelated stories, written thirty years ago by a Barcelona neighbour, now a moderately famous writer This novel is narrated by a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Max Aub‘s Campo de los almendros [Field of the Almond Trees], the sixth, last and by far the longest in his Magic Labyrinth series about the Spanish Civil War. The war is almost over at the start of this book, with the Republicans barely holding on to Valencia … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Max Aub‘s Campo del Moro [The Moor’s Camp]. This novel, the fourth book in Aub’s Magic Labyrinth series on the Spanish Civil War to be published, though the fifth in the series, is set during Fall of Madrid, which will end the Spanish Civil War. It opens on … Read more