The latest addition to my website is Lucia Etxebarría‘s Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes [Beatrice and the Heavenly Bodies]. This is the story of a young Spanish woman, Beatriz de la Haya, and her life at around the age of twenty. For a while she lives with Mónica, in the house of Mónica’s parents, who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Javier Marías‘ Así empieza lo malo [Thus Bad Begins]. This is another excellent novel from Marías about marital relations, the enduring effect of the Civil War and the Franco era on contemporary Spain and betrayal and deceit. Juan de Vere is now around fifty but tells of events … Read more
Spanish author Ana María Matute has died at the age of 88. I have four of her books on my website, three of which have been translated into English. I particularly enjoyed Paraíso inhabitado [Uninhabited Paradise], which you can read in Polish and Turkish, amongst other languages, but not in English. Her Civil War trilogy, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Rafael Chirbes‘ En la orilla [On the Shore]. This book was generally agreed by Spanish critics to be the best Spanish novel of 2013 and also the best novel on the Spanish economic crisis. As is usual with Chirbes, plot is not key to this book; indeed, there … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Antonio Muñoz Molina‘s La noche de los tiempos (UK: The Depths of Time; US: In the Night of Time), a very long book telling the story of a successful architect from a relatively poor background during the period leading up to the Spanish Civil War and the period … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juan Francisco Ferré‘s Karnaval, a superb novel about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair. Ferré takes the story of Strauss-Kahn and his alleged rape of an African chambermaid in a luxury New York hotel and makes a wonderful novel about a character called DK (the D standing for dios i.e. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Juan Francisco Ferré‘s Providence. Though the book is in Spanish and has not been translated into English, the title is in English as it refers, in part, to the city in Rhode Island, where much of the novel is set. I say in part, as Providence also refers … Read more
Luis Goytisolo has won the Spanish Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas [National Prize for Spanish Letters]. I found his Antagonía tetralogy challenging but well worth reading. Sadly, it is not available in English. Indeed, none of his work is available in English. His brother Juan won the prize in 2008. The only other writer … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Antonio Muñoz Molina‘s El jinete polaco [The Polish Rider]. When it was released in Spain in 1991, it garnered a lot of critical praise and sold well, despite its length and complexity. It tells the story of Manuel, a thirty-five year interpreter who has drifted round the world … Read more
Though we are only just over twelve years into the 21st century (yes, I can do the maths; the 21st century started on 1 January 2001), ABC has produced its list of the ten best Spanish novels of the 21st century. However, the first one on the list was actually published in the 20th century … Read more