Almudena Grandes, Pérez-Reverte, Gómez-Jurado, Lorenzo Silva and Carmen Mola, among the stars of the ‘rentrée’
Every fall, the publishing industry plays an exciting game of poker with the imprints making their biggest bet. Almudena Grandes, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Juan Gómez-Jurado, Lorenzo Silva or Enrique Vila-Matas are some of the assets of this arduous editorial battle that begins at the end of the summer and lasts until Christmas. There will be news of them in bookstores in the coming weeks, although in a fall that gets hot, they will have top competitors like Carmen Mola or Ildefonso Falcones.
A month before the first anniversary of the death of Almudena Grandes -on 27 November-, ‘Everything is better’ (Tusquets), the choral novel that the writer from Madrid completed and that portrays us from a Next future. It’s a political dystopia that he set in a Spain ruled by the civic movement ¡Soluciones Ya!, which advocates that the Council of Ministers function as a board of directors in a perfect world of obligatory happiness. It is led in the shadows by a successful businessman, at the head of a party where interrogation is expensive. The writer’s widower, Luis García Montero, is also preparing a collection of poems: he will dedicate the verses to her in ‘One Year and Three Months’ (Tusquets).
The academic and prolific writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte returns in October with ‘Revolución’ (Alfaguara), an adventure based on the theft of 15,000 twenty-peso gold coins, the so-called ‘maximilians’, from a bank in Ciudad Juárez in 1911 with starring a young Spanish mining engineer, Martín Garret Ortiz, and three women. The many and loyal readers of Pérez-Reverte travel this time to the vibrant revolutionary Mexico of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. Based on a true story told by the author’s great-grandfather, it is “a novel of initiation and learning.” “In a way, it’s my own biography of youth. My ‘Golden Arrow’» says Pérez-Reverte, referring to Conrad’s novel.
They will be featured with another bestseller forged into the historical narrative such as Ildefonso Falcones, author of the long-seller “The Cathedral of the Sea” who, after being acquitted of his tax crime trial, ” Slave of Freedom’ (Grijalbo). Played by two black women, a slave and a servant, it is set between the slave and colonial Cuba of the mid-nineteenth century and the Madrid of today.
In the realm of intrigue and crime novels, there will be an interesting pulse between Juan Gomez-Jurado, who will publish “Todo arde” (Ediciones B) in October, and “Las madres” (Alfaguara), the new “thriller” by Carmen Mola , pseudonym protecting the winning trio of the first Million Euro Planet -Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero- who still owed a title to María Fasce, the editor who catapulted them. Gómez-Jurado begins the trilogy with another ‘thriller’ set in Madrid and again with female protagonists: three ‘very dangerous women who have lost everything’. Among them is an evicted mother who seeks revenge on the system. Carmen Mola returns in the midst of an intense smell of death, as Inspector Elena Blanco unravels macabre and disturbing murders in Madrid and Coruña.
‘La llama de Focea’ (Destiny), is the title of the new novel by Lorenzo Silva, who returns after ‘El mal de Corcira’ at the end of September with his astute ‘picoletos’, Second Lieutenant Bevilacqua and Sergeant Chamorro. His worthy partner this time investigates the murder on the Camino de Santiago of the young heiress of a powerful Catalan family that supports independence. The investigation runs between Lugo and Barcelona, the city Bevilacqua met in the heat of the 1992 Olympics and where he will see the flame of anger light up.
Enrique Vila-Matas returns with ‘Montevideo’ (Seix Barral). True to his style, he tells a story about a narrator who, in complete personal and literary transformation, perceives “signs” linking Paris to Cascais, Montevideo, Reykjavík, Saint Gallen and Bogotá, and who slowly bring him back to writing,” to the desire to transform certain experiences into images of life that at the very least cry out to be told.» Once again, literature on literature by a single narrator is applauded by colleagues such as Paul Auster or Emmanuel Carrère.
Also on the news tables is Sara Mesa, with ‘La familia’ (Anagrama); Luís Mateo Díez, with ‘My crimes as a pet’ (Galaxia Gutenberg) or Santiago Lorenzo who returns after the bomb of ‘Los asquerosos’ with ‘Tostonazo’ (Blackie Books), the adventures of a deserving young man in a Madrid film that ends in Ávila, a town where “it seems” that nothing ever happens.
‘Riccardino’ (Salamandra) takes on Spanish intrigue, a novel with which the late Andrea Camilleri concluded the Commissioner Montalbano series. Mixing reality and fiction, it reveals differences between the character and its creator. Also with ‘The Judge’s List’ (Plaza & Janes), by John Grisham, which pops into the mind of a serial killer judge; ‘The Dark Hours’ (AdN), by Michael Connelly, with new cases from Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard; ‘Fairytale’ (Plaza & Janés), by Stephen King; ‘Sins of Our Fathers’ (Seix Barral), by Asa Larsson, with Rebecka Martinsson back in icy Kiruna, and ‘Blind Spot’, by Paula Hawkins, (Planet).
From the other shore of Spanish, Cuban Leopoldo Padura returns with “Decent People” (Tusquets), another case of police officer Mario Conde in Cuba in 2016 who received Obama and the Rolling. Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez presents ‘That day fell on Sunday’ (Alfaguara). Argentinian Mariana Enríquez ‘The other side’ (Anagram) and Colombian Héctor Abad Faciolince ‘Except my heart is all right’ (Alfaguara).
In the international arena, the return of Cormac McCarthy stands out. Three decades after ‘The Road’, the American published two related novels in November, ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’ (Random House), about a physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. From the last Nobel laureate, Abdulrazak Gurnah, comes ‘Life, After’ (Salamandra), and from the last Goncourt, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, ‘The most hidden memory of men’ (Anagram).
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
