Agència Literària

Bego Arretxe Irigoien

Fiction

Bego Arretxe Irigoien (Barcelona, 1968) has a degree in philosophy and has done postgraduate work in cultural management, human rights and peace building. She lived in Mexico for eight years working at CDH Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas and at Veracruzana University. In 2014, she returned to Barcelona and works as a consultant and trainer for European and Latin American organizations. She is the co-author of the books: La cárcel y su afrontamiento personal y colectivo (Colectivo Ik’ and Medicos Mundi, Chiapas, Mexico, 2003) and Bordando pensamientos (Veracruzana University, Xalapa, Mexico, 2013) She studied at the Chiapas Writing School of SOGEM and at the Lolita Bosch Literary Campus where she also taught literary creation.

Bibliography
2024

No creas una palabra

Catedral
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A story of love, friendship and rock and roll in the head-banging Barcelona of the late eighties.
The day she was commissioned to write a biography about the lead singer of Thin Lizzy, the soundtrack of her youth, Marta knew that she would have to face the embers of a past that still smoldered. Phil Lynott’s life was going to bring her back to that twenty-year-old Marta: studying at university, living alone and discovering, along with her inseparable friends, Happy and Pipe, the Barcelona that escaped the Olympic dream. It was a Barcelona at its most rebellious and radical, a city of punk and heavy metal concerts in dive bars, of unleashed violence in the streets, and the one that was devastated by heroin and AIDS.
But Phil Lynott’s life was also going to bring Marta back to her story with Manu. To her days with him. To that too-small apartment, to those boots that she liked so much and that he insisted on buying her despite believing they were too expensive, to Chopin’s Nocturnes that Manu gave her and that she took too long to listen to. To Manu’s death. To his final days. To the turning point of her life.
In the midst of this frenetic dance featuring music, heroin and AIDS, «Don’t Believe a Word» also pays tribute to mothers: to all those who fought for their drug-dependent children and those who defended their daughters’ freedom.

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Marc Artigau i Queralt

Children & YA
,  
Drama
,  
Fiction

Marc Artigau i Queralt (Barcelona, 1984) has a degree in stage direction and dramaturgy from Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre. He has received several literary awards: the Ciutat de Sagunt, Les talúries, the Gabriel Ferrater for young poets, and the Premi Quim Masó. As a playwright he has worked with Dagoll Dagom, Julio Manrique, David Selvas, Àngel Llàcer, and Oriol Broggi, among others. In the category of best adaptation, he won the Premi Max and the Premi de la Crítica awards. His novel La Vigília won the Premi Josep Pla in 2019. He has collaborated with Catalunya Ràdio and currently with El món a RAC1.

Bibliography
2024

Ben al fons del fons del mar

Estrella Polar
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2023

Aurora

Destino
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2022

Ningú sabrà qui ets

Rosa dels vents
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2021

Jo era el món

Destino
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2019

La vigília

Destino
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Les paraules inútils

Fanbooks
More information
2018

La cova dels dies

Fanbooks
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Els coloms de la Boqueria

Rosa dels vents
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2017

Un home cau

Rosa dels vents
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2016

Els perseguidors de paraules

Estrella Polar
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With a nod to mythological beings and great works such as Moby Dick and Pinocchio, Marc Artigau returns with a novel full of adventures and a powerful environmental message.

Lina lives with her grandfather since her mother disappeared at sea ten years ago. One day, she hears a song, that only she can hear, coming from the sea. Together with her grandfather and Melvil, her robot friend, they embark on a journey into the deep sea to find the origin of this melody.

During this journey they meet Gavi, a seagull that lives on a huge island made of plastics and garbage, and they also find Verne, an old abandoned submarine that will allow them to travel to the bottom of the sea in order to solve these mysteries: Where does the song come from? And what happened to Lina’s mother?

Aurora does not want Àngel to call her “mother.” On the margins of all convention, they live a strange dependence on one another, in a universe that is theirs alone. Coral is the hidden treasure of this small coastal town, the red gold that is its wealth and also the downfall of many. With the help of his uncle Jonàs, a coral fisherman, Àngel learns the risky job of diving for it. But in this small village, it is not the sea, but the village itself that will drown mother and son. Dead birds appear at their door, graffiti on the walls, and the rumors against them become threats, until they are expelled. Exiled in the city, to save Aurora from a life of misery and depression, Àngel only dreams of coral. But his secret life has filled him with ghosts and worries.

Rafa is a high school history teacher who has been moving around the darkest parts of the internet for a long time trying to start a revolution. Convinced that society is rotten and that only a good shake can get people to react, he manages to gather a group of young people willing to go to the ultimate consequences. “You have taught us that being peaceful is useless,” reads the graffiti on the wall, while the riots in Barcelona are getting worse and worse. The group’s first objective is clear: to attack the director of the Bank of Catalonia. Meanwhile, detective Albert Martinez has traveled to London to rebuild his life. About to turn fifty, he is suffering from an identity crisis, but a call from Commissioner Pérez Navarro, disturbed by the strange circumstances of the kidnapping of an extreme right-wing politician, will force him to return to investigate.

The mysterious disappearance of Ariadna, a seventeen-year-old teenager, in a town called Arveda will trigger the reactions of her family and friends in a suffocating environment where nothing is what it seems.

Raimon writes stories for the radio and lives with his brother Blai, who is crushed after a childhood accident in the forest and who now lives a simple life as an employee in a workshop. One day Rai receives a strange job: an older woman who always listens to his stories, Cèlia, wants to hire him to write her biography: “I could never imagine your stories would describe my life so well.”

Her story will grow, somewhere between fiction and memory. She tells him to rewrite everything she lived and he tries to figure out what is hidden behind that innocent offer.

The Eve is a captivating novel that brings together the best and worst of humankind. It is a story about the infinite power of love, the value of our memories, and the life we choose to lead to survive our past.

A selection of the best stories from the Rac1 program “El conte de Marc Artigau,” accompanied by unpublished stories and poems, and with illustrations by Miguel Gallardo.

The night Júlia turns eighteen, her grandfather is murdered. When the undertakers ask for his papers, they find nothing about him. Apparently, this man never existed. From this point on, Júlia and Gregor, her best friend and boyfriend, embark on a delirious adventure to discover who the girl’s grandfather really was. But Júlia can’t even imagine what awaits her: the discovery of the cave of days, which is a secret and tiny place on earth where the passage of time does not exist…

While on vacation in New York, Albert Martinez, receives a message: “A woman has been killed in the Boquería.” One late summer morning, the famous market on La Rambla has awakened to a macabre scene that upsets the city. What should have been a quiet day in one of the most colorful and bustling corners of downtown Barcelona, has been stained with blood after a gruesome crime.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Grijalbo)

One spring night, private detective Albert Martínez witnesses a disturbing scene: two men approach the most dangerous part of the Mar Bella breakwater, gesticulating as if they were arguing. After a while, only one returns. Thus begins an exciting investigation that will lead him to discover the darkest secrets of a wealthy and influential family of the city. Alongside the exceptional detective Albert Martínez, we enter a setting and story as original, gastronomic, nocturnal and hidden as Barcelona itself.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Grijalbo)

Noa is a restless and very observant girl. One morning, she discovers a mystery that leaves her very intrigued: words are disappearing…To solve this enigma, Noa will go to the school library. There she will start a thrilling adventure story full of fantastic characters: tiny apostrophes, disgusting barbarisms…and a nameless monster fully prepared to destroy words.

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Jordi Basté

Non-fiction
,  
Fiction

Jordi Basté (Barcelona, 1965) is the director and presenter of El món a RAC1, Catalonia’s leading radio program. He worked at Catalunya Ràdio for twenty-two years, where he collaborated as a basketball broadcaster. He also presented La jornada on Sunday afternoons and the nightly sports program No ho diguis a ningú.

In 2004 he joined RAC1, where, in addition to being head of Sports, he presented the nightly sports program Tu diràs. At the beginning of 2007 he replaced Xavier Bosch at RAC1’s morning program El món and currently publishes a weekly column in La Vanguardia’s Sunday edition. He has won several awards in recognition of his radio work, including a Protagonistas, three Ondas, an Òmnium de Comunicació, the King of Spain Journalism Award, the National Radio Award, and four Ràdio Associació awards.

Bibliography
2022

Ningú sabrà qui ets

Rosa dels vents
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2021

Els Catarres X

Rosa dels Vents
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2020

Sol com un mussol

Ara Llibres
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2019

No pot ser!

Rosa dels vents
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2018

Els coloms de la Boqueria

Rosa dels vents
More information
2017

Un home cau

Rosa dels vents
More information

Rafa is a high school history teacher who has been moving around the darkest parts of the internet for a long time trying to start a revolution. Convinced that society is rotten and that only a good shake can get people to react, he manages to gather a group of young people willing to go to the ultimate consequences. “You have taught us that being peaceful is useless,” reads the graffiti on the wall, while the riots in Barcelona are getting worse and worse. The group’s first objective is clear: to attack the director of the Bank of Catalonia. Meanwhile, detective Albert Martinez has traveled to London to rebuild his life. About to turn fifty, he is suffering from an identity crisis, but a call from Commissioner Pérez Navarro, disturbed by the strange circumstances of the kidnapping of an extreme right-wing politician, will force him to return to investigate.

With their ultra-bright, optimistic and danceable songs, Els Catarres were the first Catalan festive pop group to be played on the country’s commercial radio stations and pioneers in selling out venues like Barcelona’s Sant Jordi Club. But Els Catarres’ story is also the life story of Joan, Roser and Èric, three young people who were catapulted into the spotlight overnight. Thanks to the power of social networks along with their perseverance, talent and inspiration, they managed to make a name for themselves in the music scene. Through the eyes of Jordi Basté, this intimate and sincere book covers ten years of Els Catarres anecdotes, secrets and confessions, along with unpublished documents, that promise to take you on a journey through a decade as wild and as “catarra” as they are.

When Jordi Basté was locked up at home with fears and uncertainties after having tested positive for Covid-19 and with a good part of the team ill, he made the impossible possible: Six hours a day of radio and record audience numbers during an exceptional situation. The journalist discusses the obsessions and concerns of those days and what made him smile: Pieces of the construction from the apartment below that appear in his apron; the conversation with Pilar Rahola and Oriol Mitjà that leaves him in shock; the remote coordination of his team that reminds him of the film Ratatouille, and the meeting with Toni Clapés, Angès Marquès and Xavi Bundó to share the experience of doing radio from home. This book is an intimate chronicle of the few months that have changed us all forever.

Accompanied by Jordi Basté, this book allows us to learn about the great advances changing the world: From robotics to food, from transportation to health, from personal relationships through new technologies to the great challenges posed by climate change and Big Data.

While on vacation in New York, Albert Martinez, receives a message: “A woman has been killed in the Boquería.” One late summer morning, the famous market on La Rambla has awakened to a macabre scene that upsets the city. What should have been a quiet day in one of the most colorful and bustling corners of downtown Barcelona, has been stained with blood after a gruesome crime.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Grijalbo)

One spring night, private detective Albert Martínez witnesses a disturbing scene: two men approach the most dangerous part of the Mar Bella breakwater, gesticulating as if they were arguing. After a while, only one returns. Thus begins an exciting investigation that will lead him to discover the darkest secrets of a wealthy and influential family of the city. Alongside the exceptional detective Albert Martínez, we enter a setting and story as original, gastronomic, nocturnal and hidden as Barcelona itself.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Grijalbo)

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Mònica Boix March

Fiction

Mònica Boix March (Barcelona) was born in the neighborhood of La Marina. She begins a long and disorganized period in which she starts and abandons her studies, shares apartments without certificates of occupancy, co-creates the now defunct feminist collective Ex-Dones, explores the night and the precariousness of work in assembly lines, as a waitress, freelance proofreader, babysitter, private tutor, tea vendor, house cleaner, bookstore assistant, administrative, and other jobs. When she decides to finish her studies in Catalan Philology, the subject matter has mutated into a degree. In the city, she begins working at a public library, where she selects the fiction collection and leads book clubs to share reading tastes and stimulate collective literary dialogue. One fine day she decides to stop and draw up a plan to give voice to some of her concerns in the form of a novel.

Jordi Boixadós

Fiction

Jordi Boixadós i Bisbal (Barcelona, 1958), a resident of Maresme since 1982, is a writer and literary translator. He has published ten books since 1991, mostly narrative, and has translated about ninety books from English, French, Italian, and Swedish, mainly into Catalan. Boixadós also has a career as a musician in the pop-rock auteur genre. His passion for languages led him to write and perform songs in six different languages on the CD Europa (2005) and to collaborate with several French musicians on the album Cuques de llum (2014). He is also an actor in the La Pèrfida theatre company.

Bibliography
2022

Mentre la neu sigui blanca

Columna Edicions
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2015

L'home que comptava diners

RBA
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2011

Àngels a l'andana

Columna Edicions
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2010

Mirades de dona

Columna
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Einar, who was born and lives in a small town in northern Sweden, has never known, in his forty years, why his father left Catalonia when he was young, not wanting to return. Circumstances will push him to discover the truth and will lead him to a world of silences still maintained from the past.

Elies Costa, a textile businessman, has a wife and children, a house with a swimming pool, a second home in La Cerdanya, and a factory in the Chinese city of Suzhou. Everyone is convinced he’s a success and that life smiles upon him. But what no one suspects is that he is the Chinese mafia’s dirty money courier to Andorra, has a mistress who could be playing both sides or that he’s trapped in an endless spiral of extortion that has him on the verge of collapse.

How is it possible that his life is such a living hell?

A man suffers a heart attack while standing in line at a bank. The cardiac arrest has been so long that the physical consequences are extremely serious. At the same time, in a house in Barcelona, an elderly woman has been in an irreversible coma for five years as a result of a traffic accident. What would happen if these two characters could express their feelings and desires in the midst of their hopeless situation and turn it into a novel?

Eight women’s views can be found in this book. Eight stories told by women from different countries, from different conditions and in different personal situations: the one who has lost contact with her daughter and her husband is close to dying; the one who has fallen in love with an artist and does not succeed; and the one who knows she is too late to have children… Jordi Boixadós has put himself in the shoes of these characters to show their full dimension as women and as people. He shows their ability to react to adverse situations, to maintain love even when it goes against them, to resist when a lack of communication imposes itself without remedy. In the end, this book is a vision of the world from a not always winning side, but with an undeniable strength to face life.

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Lolita Bosch

Non-fiction
,  
Fiction

Lolita Bosch (Barcelona, 1970) has lived in Barcelona, Girona, the United States, India, Nicaragua, Oaxaca, and Mexico City. She is a novelist and an author of children’s books, young adult literature and essays. Aside from her research and journalism, she is also the editor of several anthologies. Her work has been awarded prestigious prizes, made into films and theater, and has also been translated into several languages. She has published more than 90 books and collaborates with various renowned media and critics in several countries. She gives a large part of her work and time to the creation and maintenance of peace activism projects through Campus Lolita. A writer, activist, educator and philosopher, she earned a PhD in Philosophy in 2023. She is the creator of the Método Mandarina.

Bibliography
2023

El jardí de l'àvia

La Campana
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La veritat no està escrita

La Campana
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2022

Agafeu-me a mi

Grup62
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2016

La Ràbia

Àmsterdam Llibres
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Like a garden, this is a wonderful and captivating book inhabited by cherries, apples, pears, oranges, loquats, grapes, laurel, mint, rosemary, geraniums, lilies and sunflowers. A garden also of memories. Of love and sadness. Of life and death. Of longing. A portrait, above all, of a strong and brilliant woman, with an idea of family as a defined and safe space. A place to always come back to. A place to be yourself.

The pillaging of Romanesque churches of the Pyrenees; a passionate love affair at the foot of Tibidabo; and the mystery of an extraordinary art forger. These elements form part of a novel set in a Barcelona that, in the late nineteenth century, became a European metropolis thanks to the fortunes accumulated as a result of slavery by some of its most illustrious citizens. In other words, a city financed with part of that dirty money. The fascinating, yet tragic history of the extraordinary Catarineu art collection, with more than four thousand pieces passionately gathered over time, and its disappearance. Events that are deeply linked to the city’s silence about its origins, to the wounds of the Civil War and the economic dealings of Franco’s regime. Showing that, even today, the upper class never completely loses.

Today, in Mexico, 23 people have disappeared. One of them is Roy Rivera. One morning in January, men dressed in police uniforms took him from his home, where he was sleeping with his mother and brother. “Which of the two is the oldest?” they asked. The mother begged to be taken away, for them not to hurt her children, who were still young, who had hope, friends, loves, a life to live. But Roy wanted to protect his brother and said, “Take me. I’m the older brother.” Based on a real case, Lolita Bosch has written a shocking work that is raw, tender, poetic, lucid, forceful, and that will appeal to readers.

Part novel, part chronicle, this is the story of Roy and all the disappeared in Mexico —more than 85,000 in recent years— and the tireless struggle of their families to find them.

Brave, honest and brutally personal, Lolita Bosch’s new novel recalls the bullying the author suffered as a teenager. The 2016 Roc Boronat Prize winner is an exciting and essential narrative, a public condemnation of an appalling and too often silenced reality. Today, Lolita is a recognized writer and journalist; she is a mother, a peace worker and lover of life. And she has finally found the strength to write about her adolescence, when from the age of fourteen to seventeen, like so many other teenagers, she was a victim of bullying. Lolita suffered insults and humiliation, and felt indifference and contempt. She became someone who wanted to go unnoticed, who had to learn how to become like iron and who just wanted those days, that passed so slowly, to be over, over, over… A time of cruel complicity between classmates, where she found relief in a green diary where she wrote about the unbearable feeling of suffocation that sank her, about the darkness that surrounded her and the rage that grew thinking it would be eternal. Until now.

A narrative that oozes emotion, sincerity and that is read with a heavy heart, like the author who lived those years and describes them. A must read.

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Mar Bosch Oliveras

Children & YA
,  
Fiction

Mar Bosch Oliveras (Girona, 1981) has a degree in philosophy and specializes in cultural journalism. Her first novel, Bedlam: Darrere les hores càlides, won her the XXXII Just M. Casero novella prize and since then she has published several novels: Les generacions espontànies, which won the 11th Premi Setè Cel de Salt in 2017; La mujer efervescente, awarded the X Premi l’Illa dels Llibres; and L’edat dels vius, which won her the Premi Creixells awarded by the Ateneo Barcelonés. She has also published young adult novels and collaborates regularly with small publishers and the written press.

Bibliography
2022

L'edat dels vius

Univers
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2021

El dia de l'esquerda

La Galera
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2020

La dona efervescent

Univers
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2018

Vindràs amb mi després del diluvi

Comanegra
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2016

Les generacions espontànies

Edicions del Periscopi
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2015

1001 curiositats de Girona i el Gironès

L'Arca
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2013

Bedlam

Empúries
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From one of the Catalan scene’s most personal voices, a novel that forces us to face a very possible future. The Age of the Living begins with the death of the protagonist’s partner and after the initial pain and shock, she observes what is happening around her (the world’s instantaneous decline). Offering a testimony of the collapse of the life she knew, she decides to flee the city. Later, she is surprised to discover that a small community of old preppers still exists in the world. And she, a “young” survivor, can’t comprehend it.

With futuristic airs, The Age of the Living is loaded with social criticism while pleading in favor of preserving the heritage of past generations, as well as love and friendship.

Lluci gathers her friends to tell them that she will soon be leaving town. Out of nowhere an earthquake shakes up her plans and the entire planet when a mysterious girl arises from the center of the Earth changing their lives forever. Surprising phenomena. Incredible beings. A group of teenagers and their parents’ secret that will completely alter the world they knew until now. The future asks them to be part of this adventure. When the earth moves, it’s a sign that the world is about to change…

Eva, alone and in charge of newborn twins, reviews the radical turn her life has taken in the last few months. From how she met her partner Miquel to dealing with a neurotic mother-in-law whose complaints play over and over in her head, to the ever-absent figure of Miquel, a father incapable of getting up at night to take care of his children or make the slightest gesture toward them. Eva is alone, once again, fresh from a process that has not turned out to be as beautiful as she was told it was going to be. Little or no warning was given about the physiological and psychological peculiarities of pregnancy, not to mention the postpartum period, or the need to create a family without any kind of manual. 

Eva feels like an aspirin in a glass of water, effervescent, disappearing at times from a terrifying reality. With the unexpected help of a neighbor, she will struggle to find herself again and regain control of reality, far away from complaining voices and the twins’ cries.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Catedral)

Sigrid doesn’t understand a thing. A small-town girl like her has a hard time deciphering the codes of adulthood in this city. She has just arrived with her brother Noè from Sant Guim de Freixenet to a relative’s house with a universe of its own and so much to discover. The city is filtered through an inquisitive innocence and through Sigrid’s eyes Barcelona’s Forum of Cultures and the bustling contemporary streetcars appear unusually amplified. She must go down every street because she needs to return home with something, a motive, a piece of information that will encourage her brother to leave the room in which he has insisted on locking himself up in.

Eva has her first job interview after a long period without opportunities. Determined to get the job, she carefully presents her résumé, brimming with ephemeral and radically heterodox experiences. In showing them, she will map out points of her personality, marked by an incombustible stubbornness and a curious vision of the world around her, and will turn what should have been a formal interview into a fluid and uncomplicated conversation. With a bold and precise style, Mar Bosch offers us a text that drinks from the legacy of Pere Calders, where reality and imagination are accomplices.

The industrial colonies, scattered throughout inland Catalonia, are one of the most characteristic elements of its industrial heritage. Their unique identity is the soul of the industrialization process that took place during the 19th century. Built in rural areas, far from urban centers, they had all kinds of supplies and services that in most cases made them self-sufficient. In addition to their labor purpose, the colonies developed intense social, cultural and religious lifestyles, often promoted by the owners themselves or by priests and teachers. They were like small towns, all under the protection of a master who assumed the functions traditionally assumed by the State and who exercised social control over the factory’s neighbors and workers. This book presents a broad overview of Catalan industrial colonies, highlighting the many social and labor curiosities of these significant places in Catalan geography.

Bedlam is a unique mixture of an apparently childish tale and an attempt to construct the symbolisms of a community where oblivion reigns like a slab and is a necessary last hope. In refined prose, the accumulation of surprising and fantastic events brings us closer to the noble purpose of a moral fable, a reflection on loss and reconstruction.

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Pep Bras

Fiction

Pep Bras (Premià de Mar, 1962) is a scriptwriter and writer. He has published some thirty books in all genres, from novels such as L’edat dels monstres (Premi Sant Jordi 1998 finalist), short story collections such as El bajel de las Vaginas Voraginosas (La Sonrisa Vertical Award, 1987) and plays such as City Bang Blues (Antoni Santos Memorial Award, 1989). He has also co-written five short story collections with the Germans Miranda collective, the last of which, Assassins, was published by Columna in 2024.

Bibliography
2014

La niña que hacía hablar a las muñecas

Siruela
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2012

La vida en siete minutos

Seix Barral
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1987

El vaixell de les vagines voraginoses

Tusquets
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At the beginning of the 20th century, a strong storm runs aground an ocean liner from Barcelona in front of the Brazilian island of Ilhabela. It’s an almost virgin paradise where its humble inhabitants live peacefully surrounded by exuberant nature and myths such as that of the powerful jaguar Gápanemé. The young Joan Bras, who miraculously survives the shipwreck, will live a passionate love story with Catarina, the attractive widow who works as a doctor on the island.

Thus begins The Girl Who Made Dolls Talk, an epic novel where ventriloquists and illusionists parade by, along with romantics who dream of making Gaudí’s genius known around the world, assassins who do not appear to be, women who fall in love with the wrong men, and unconfessable secrets. An emotional journey that culminates in the fascinating and cosmopolitan Paris of the 1920s.

This novel could begin on the night of April 24, 1991, when a couple volunteers at a magic show and are hypnotized for seven minutes that are forever erased from their lives. Or much earlier, with a child playing at interviewing characters. Or much later, with him as an adult writing scripts for a television show he hates. Or with a terrible car accident and someone who discovers he can change the past. Or with a murder.

Life in Seven Minutes is the story of the recovery of a man who has fallen from grace in a tragicomic manner. The mantra of every screenwriter, “You will not make life easy for the protagonist,” falls on him like a curse, a sentence marked by two uncontrollable factors: destiny’s force and the suspicion that his life depends on the reconstruction of seven magical minutes.

The Vessel of Voracious Vaginas is a toy; a literary kaleidoscope full of imagination, through which female readers, male readers, or preferably both together, have the privilege of spying on cuckolded husbands, ill-fated twins, parrots in love, maternal widows, and voracious queens from the cruel planet Drakkar. We invite the reader to feel like a voyeur for a moment. To snuggle into a comfortable armchair and use this book as if they were binoculars. You will surely discover that the neighbors across the street are the protagonists of hitherto unsuspected experiences. Especially if they take place in a city as exciting, as delirious, and as suggestive as Xaitania by Josep Bras.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Tusquets)

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Jordi Cervera Nogués

Children & YA
,  
Non-fiction
,  
Fiction

Jordi Cervera Nogués (Reus, 1959) is a journalist. For his book blog at Catalunya Radio he has won several awards such as the Vila de Martorell, the Blocs Catalunya for best culture blog and the Vila de Lloret for best literature blog. He has won several prizes in journalism, poetry and narrative, including the Edebé prize for young adult literature. His novel La mort a sis vint-i-cinc has been translated into four languages and is on its nineteenth edition. He has also published books of non-fiction, cooking and a theatrical monologue.

Pere Colomer i Roma

Non-fiction

Pere Colomer i Roma (Vic, 1966) has a degree in economics and contemporary history. His research has focused mainly in the field of business history. He contributed to the book Borgonyà: Una colònia industrial del Ter (1996), awarded the Bonaplata prize and is the author of the books: Roca: Història d’una indústria (2009); Barcelona: Una capital del fil (2014), which won the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona Agustí Duran i Sanpere; and Una empresa amb ànima (2023), winner of the Crítica Serra d’Or research award. He has collaborated several times with Barcelona’s Museo de Historia and is currently part of the team designing the upcoming Labor Interpretation Centre in the former Fabra i Coats factory complex in Sant Andreu de Palomar.

Bibliography
2023

Una empresa amb ànima

Anthesis Lavola
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2019

1001 curiositats de les colònies industrials de Catalunya

L'Arca
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2014

Barcelona, una capital del fil

MUHBA
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Forty years ago, a group of young people from Osona, linked to the world of education and natural sciences, became pioneers by introducing environmental education among school priorities. Within a few years, La Vola became a pioneering company in environmental services, with sustainability as a reference. It continued its expansion until it became part of the international group Anthesis in 2019. Over the course of these four decades, the profound changes in our society have conditioned Lavola’s trajectory, which continues to provide creative, innovative and efficient solutions to administrations and companies, in which the commitment to the environment is increasingly clear.

The industrial colonies scattered throughout inland Catalonia are one of the most characteristic elements of its industrial heritage. Their unique identity is the soul of the industrialization process that took place during the 19th century. Built in rural areas, far from urban centers, they had all kinds of supplies and services that made them self-sufficient in most cases. In addition to their labor purpose, the colonies developed an intense social, cultural and religious lifestyle, often promoted by the owners themselves or by priests and teachers. They were like small towns, all under the protection of a master who assumed the functions traditionally assumed by the State and who exercised social control over the factory’s neighbors and workers.

This book presents a broad overview of Catalan industrial colonies, highlighting all the social and labor curiosities found in these significant places of Catalan geography.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Scottish multinational J. & P. Coats was the third largest industrial company in the world, and its Catalan subsidiary, Fabra i Coats, the first textile company in Spain. The book traces the formation process of the Compañía Anónima Hilaturas de Fabra i Coats and delves into the trajectory of the business management model it adopted from its incorporation in 1903 until 1936. Throughout its chapters, the financial, industrial, commercial and human resources policies of the company are analyzed, as well as the relative weight that the decisions of the Coats and Fabra families had in the formation of the company’s culture and in the configuration of its labor strategy and social benefits for the workers.

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Marc Font

Fiction

Marc Font (Gironella) has a degree in translation and interpreting from Pompeu Fabra University, a master’s degree in linguistics from the University of Barcelona and works as a high school Catalan and English teacher. He wrote La modista de Gràcia, his first novel, using cell phone notes during his sabbatical year.

Bibliography
2024

La modista de Gràcia

La Campana
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Loreto was born in 1944 in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona, to a modest family that worked in one of the most important steamships of the city, La Sedeta. At the age of 12, her parents take her out of school to set her up with Mr. Carles Vidal, the owner of the factory’s brother, with whom she will live the most traumatic and tragic episodes of her life. After an unexpected event, instead of making a living ironing for one of the great textile establishments in Barcelona, she decides to set up her own business as a wedding dressmaker. But when she receives her first order, the bride disappears three days before the wedding. Throughout the next decades, while Loreto manages to make a name for herself and gain prestige as a dressmaker, disappearances and deaths of brides continue to occur.

One night in the present, Loreto bursts into her neighbor Xavi’s house wearing a white bathrobe covered in blood and asking for help. Left in shock by Loreto, he will investigate who his neighbor really is, Gràcia’s dressmaker.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Trini Vergara Ediciones)

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Jaume Fuster

Fiction

Jaume Fuster i Guillermó (Barcelona, 1945 – 1998) had already written his first novel at the age of 14. He would soon become aware of the country’s social and political situation and his first works would reflect the long Francoist repression that those born in the post-war period had to live through. He was a screenwriter and translator and his narratives won him some of the most prestigious literary awards, as well as an undisputed place in contemporary Catalan literature. His devotion to Tolkien was transformed into the magnificent trilogy of swords and sorcery that began with L’illa de les Tres Taronges (1983). In 2005 the new central public library of Barcelona’s Gracia district was inaugurated and named in his honor.

Bibliography
2024

L'anell de ferro

Rosa dels Vents
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L'illa de les Tres Taronges

Rosa dels Vents
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The second volume of the great Catalan epic fantasy trilogy by Jaume Fuster.

After triumphing on the Island of the Three Oranges, the soldier of fortune Roger d’Adià returns to the mainland at the request of the kingdom of Montcarrà. This time the Company of the Bearer – formed by the poet Guiamon, the servant Poncet and the monk Guiós – will have to face ambitious westerners, who want to subdue and destroy the Known World. But before they reach land, Roger d’Adià and Princess Garidaina fall into the hands of the enemy hosts of the West while boarding their ship on the Great Sea. Their imprisonment does not bode well. To defend themselves against the invaders, a group of warriors will rise above the rest to captain the resistance against the enemy, with the iron ring as a symbol of their brotherhood. The poet Guiamon, thanks to the magic of the Ancient Sayings of the Green Book of the Monastery of Vall-llòbrega and the protection of the Lady of Water, will be the only one who will know how to face the Army of the West.

Will the Company of the Bearer and the Knights of the Iron Ring be able to defeat the army of the Queen of the West and defeat the Westerners? Will the poet manage to free Princess Garidaina and bring Roger of Adià back to his senses?

A new mythical adventure in Jaume Fuster’s trilogy, which begins with L’illa de les Tres Taronges and closes with El jardí de les palmeres.

Roger, a mercenary from the city of Adià, receives a visit from an emissary of the king of the Island of Three Oranges who asks him to help them win the war and overcome the misfortunes plaguing the kingdom of Montcarrà. Thus, the young soldier, hero of a thousand battles, assisted by his servant Poncet and the poet Guiamon, embarks on a dangerous adventure following the mysterious prophecy of the Wise Man, whose mission is to recover the Banner of the Island of Three Oranges and restore peace to the kingdom of Montcarrà. But the forces of Evil on the Island are powerful, and Roger, despite the help of a magic sword, will have to fight against the very king he wanted to serve and against the betrayal of a friend. Neither the soldier’s love for the island’s princess nor his courage seem strong enough to fulfill the prophecy.

The Island of Three Oranges
is the first book in an exciting trilogy by the writer Jaume Fuster, which continues with The Iron Ring and concludes with The Garden of Palms.

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Juan Miñana

Fiction

Juan Miñana (Barcelona, 1959) studied history. When he was very young he won the City of San Sebastián narrative prize and at the age of 25, Seix Barral published his first novel, La Claque. Since then he regularly publishes narratives and essays with Barcelona as a backdrop. Critics have recognized the originality of his work and have highlighted his ability to lead readers through time and history with a hypnotic capacity, using irony and humor. In addition to his literary production, he has also been a contributor to various media. As a journalist and writer, it is worth mentioning his work as a travel book commentator.

Bibliography
2022

La novela ideal

Catedral
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2015

El cielo de los mentirosos

Malpaso
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2009

Hay luz en casa de Publio Fama

RBA
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2000

El Jaquemart

Tusquets
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1990

Noticias del mundo real

Tusquets
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La novela ideal is the story of a character who lived on the margins and was a secondary actor—and privileged spectator— of many of the movements that marked the city of Barcelona in the first half of the last century. From the most decadent bohemia to the splendors of naturist nudism, passing through esotericism and libertarian movements, our character reinvents himself to adapt to the spirit of permanent change.

The astonishment of a literary man of extemporaneous erudition and dignity, the naturist society that preaches vegetarianism and nudism in a pious society and the collective amazement at the always unexpected twists of history make this novel an artifact laced with humor, full of real characters, but also a book that offers indelible loads of depth and immerses the reader in a hypnotic literary journey.

Centered in early twentieth century Barcelona, this novel offers us the vicissitudes and decline of a wise man and bohemian during his days of fame and glory in Barcelona and Paris. Based on the life of Pompeyo Gener, “Peius,” this multifaceted character is at once erudite, cheeky and a symbol of the decadent and cultured bohemia of the time. A hypnotic novel that is structured around humor and a city that, although will never return, Juan Miñana will never allow us to forget.

Hay luz en casa de Publio Fama is the story of a young man who becomes the first news reporter in Barcelona’s Roman colony of Barcino. The arrival to the city of an ill-reputed veteran of the legions and ex-convict, to whom the State has granted a plot of land, shakes the order of the ruling family’s hegemony. When turbulent acts begin to follow, Publio will be both narrator and protagonist.
In a time of extreme delicacy and cruelty, Juan Miñana describes the birth of a profession—the journalist as information seller—highlighting the importance of public opinion in the face of impunity and abuse of power. Above all, Miñana shapes a brilliant inquiry into the human soul.

A novel that combines the most demanding literary skills as it persuades and immerses readers in a fascinating era.

During the last years of Philip IV’s reign, a plague ravages Barcelona. Buenaventura Deulocrega, a master in arts and medicine, arrives at the Hospital de la Santa Cruz ready to fight against the epidemic. He meets the wise and enigmatic Juan de Ameno, the king’s watchmaker, who has sought asylum in the hospital’s private chambers. There he will conceive what will be his last project: a bronze jaquemart, or automated bell striker, destined for the cathedral’s clock tower. From this strange refuge Buenaventura and Juan de Ameno witness the onslaught of a difficult and bitter present, forging a friendship sheltered behind the constant recreation of the past, in a fable plotted with clockwork subtlety that safeguards them from the relentless passage of time.

Barcelona, 1963. Gabriel and Teddy are two young friends working on the large crew that Samuel Bronston has hired for the filming of Circus World. From different social backgrounds, but with identical ambitions, they do not want to waste this opportunity they’ve been given. When one morning, John Wayne, the lead actor of the film, disappears without warning they agree to find him in exchange for a trip to Hollywood. They begin a frantic search that, with the benefit of hindsight, will become a decisive learning experience for Gabriel. On a journey full of unforeseen events in an imaginary papier-mâché Barcelona, that’s also poor and sad, those few hours will intertwine everyone’s destinies. Gabriel will not only learn the truth behind the myth, but about the real world he’s immersed in. Lessons that will allow him to accept his inevitable maturity.

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Raúl Montilla

Non-fiction
,  
Fiction

Raúl Montilla (Barcelona, 1979) is a journalist. He began his professional career in 1998 working with local media in Barcelona. He took over the Culture section of the regional weekly El Far in 2000 and began to contribute to El País and EFE news agency until the end of 2001 when he became the metropolitan correspondent for El Mundo. He also contributed to La Vanguardia for close to twenty years. He has written fiction and non-fiction and Grijalbo published his novel Las hijas de la fábrica in 2024.

Bibliography
2024

Las hijas de la fábrica

Grijalbo
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2021

El lamento del Urco

Serial Ediciones
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2017

Iceta

Ediciones B
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2016

Barcelona de novel·la

Diëresis
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Vallarana

Tandaia
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Outskirts of Barcelona, the seventies. Everything is changing fast in the neighborhoods. Factories and apartment blocks have transformed what used to be waste ground, but there is still a long way to go. Protestors are proliferating, demanding not only schools and parks, but also extended rights in a Spain still subdued by Francoism. One of those voices is that of Leonor.

Born in Cordoba, she emigrated to the north in search of a better future. Ten years later, she is worried about the direction her children have taken. Especially Lucía. A staunch supporter of the workers’ struggle, the young woman has achieved the dream of many in Barcelona’s outskirts: to work at SEAT, the mythical car factory. However, this milestone brings unexpected challenges to the family.

Three generations of women who will witness an era marked by social unrest and violence, but also with love and the desire for freedom.

Laura Garcia, sub-inspector of the Mossos d’Esquadra, travels to Ribadeo to participate in a European security congress invited by an old friend, the National Police Commissioner Felipe Pereira, a homicide sleuth who, as he himself says, is only dedicated to showing himself off. Laura decides to stay in an idyllic rural house where both its owners and guests keep secrets that intertwine: not everyone is what they seem to be. A story of Galician drug traffickers, their connections to the Russian mafia, old spies, and an important multinational security company. A novel that takes place not only in Galicia, but in Barcelona and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, specifically within an important global tech congress where it’s evident that 21st century crime may have local manifestations, but it’s global.

“On my tombstone it will say: He was gay and danced,” Iceta jokes while he rearranges some books in his small office, where folders are piled up and papers are stacked. This is the biography of Miquel Iceta, leader of the Socialists’ Party of Catalonia (PSC). Over the last four decades he has been a key figure in Spanish and Catalan politics, not only as a witness, but as an active part of it.

An invitation to know and visit Barcelona from a different point of view; through literature. A walk through the streets and pages dedicated to a city that has been the setting for mythical novels such as Don Quijote or La plaça del diamant and has played a leading role in such well-known titles as La catedral del mar, La ciudad de los prodigios and La sombra del viento. Here is a modern itinerary through the places that became an essential presence for thousands of plots, from Nada to Victus to Los mares del sur. Not only is it a vivid look at the enclaves that marked authors such as García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Vázquez Montalbán, Montserrat Roig, and Terenci Moix, but a book that’s an invitation to read.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Diëresis)

Vallarana is a mountain village where nobody dies at all because there’s no cemetery. For that reason, the over 200-year-old parish priest Ginés Revilla continues to officiate mass despite being a ghost. There is also the landowner, Don Rafael Seleno and a young man, Enrique Lafuente, who questions what everyone else thinks is right (and maybe it’s not) and who falls in love. Love! With whom? With Estrella. With the wonderful Estrella. Vallarana is a novel where not everything is what it seems, where reality coexists with what could be and with what couldn’t be, definitely not, maybe? But where everything is possible. A young adult novel that uses irony and humor to reflect on power, vanity, envy, war…Friendship and generosity. Also hope.

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Maria Antònia Oliver

Fiction

Maria Antònia Oliver i Cabrer (Manacor, 1946 – Sencelles, 2022) published her first novel, Cròniques d’un mig estiu, when she was 25 years old. In the long list of books published, she has written novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, and reports. Published in several languages, she also translated into Catalan authors such as Virginia Woolf, Jules Verne, Mark Twain and Herman Melville. She was part of the seventies literary generation and a member of the Ofèlia Dracs collective. In 2016 she was awarded the Catalan Letters Prize of Honor.

Bibliography
2024

El sol que fa l'ànec

La Magrana
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Antípodes

La Magrana
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2023

Estudi en lila

La Magrana
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Paraules al sol

La Magrana
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After Estudi en lila and Antípodes, Lònia Guiu embarks on a search for a missing girl. During an investigation that takes her to Germany, Lònia Guiu cannot explain why an apparently traditional Mallorcan song is repeatedly played. At the end of the assignment she will uncover a pedophile ring organized by Mallorcan businessmen in collusion with the local police.

After Estudi en lila, Maria Antònia Oliver returns with Antipodes, a second novel starring Lònia Guiu, a private detective who is surly, feminist, independent, rebellious, and full of contradictions.

Antípodes moves the action to Australia, a continent where Lònia decides to travel to in order to forget about her first case. There she will uncover an international network of prostitution and illegal human trafficking with a branch in Mallorca, where she will return to investigate its connections. For the detective, this assignment means she’ll have to suffer, both physically and psychologically, in order to discover who is behind the island’s prostitution network.

A pregnant teenager who has disappeared, an antiques dealer who has been swindled, an eighties Barcelona that’s exploding, and a unique Mallorcan detective who, to celebrate her wins and losses, buys a lipstick for her collection. With an echo of Sherlock Holmes in its title, this debut novel starring Lonia Guiu, the pioneering investigator created by Maria Antònia Oliver, is not only crime fiction tinged with vindictive lilac but first-rate literature.

Maria Antònia Oliver wrote this epistolary novel, unpublished to date, based on the letters that she and her partner, the writer Jaume Fuster, exchanged while he was doing his military service on the island of Cabrera, where he was transferred for political reasons.

The love story of the two protagonists, written under the pseudonyms of Olivia Guillot and Yus Picó, intertwines emotions, longing and anger at the imposed separation in this portrait of a gray country in the late sixties, in which freedom and speech were closed away under lock and key.

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Open Arms

Children & YA

Open Arms is a non-profit non-governmental organisation with one principal mission: to protect those who try to reach Europe by sea, fleeing from armed conflict, persecution or poverty; and also to inform and educate on land so that those who migrate can make decisions with complete freedom and knowledge.

Bibliography
2023

El llarg vol d'en Nu

La Galera
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El somni de la Mirabel

La Galera
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2022

La Sira i les seves germanes

La Galera
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La cançó de Josepha

La Galera
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For a while I was a soldier-bird. A simple little bird that began to go mad, erasing all vestiges of what it had been. A giraffe, also a captive, told me one day: “There are other lands in the north, beyond a great sea, and it is said that everything is different there, that there is no war, but peace.”

Cuentos a la deriva is a solidarity project by La Galera with Open Arms.

Rights sold: World Spanish (La Galera)

She used to tell me that FREEDOM was flying like a bird, touching the clouds or gliding over a lake, deciding at every moment where you want to go. That FREEDOM could also be a forest of towering trees where we could live in peace, without anyone hurting us or forcing us to do work we don’t want to do in exchange for nothing.

Cuentos a la deriva is a solidarity project by La Galera with Open Arms.

Rights sold: World Spanish (La Galera)

One fish alone does not have much strength. Two fish alone do not have much strength. Three fish alone are not very strong. Four fish alone… But a hundred fish together! A hundred fish together have a lot of strength.

Cuentos a la deriva is a solidarity project by La Galera with Open Arms.

Rights sold: World Spanish (La Galera)

Have you ever heard of Cameroon? An African country full of animals living in freedom: giraffes, hippopotamuses, cheetahs, buffaloes, lions, gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants like Josepha, wildebeests and bongos. Can you imagine? A country where animals run free and elephants can be school teachers…

Cuentos a la deriva is a solidarity project by La Galera with Open Arms.

Rights sold: World Spanish (La Galera)

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Antoni Oró Badia

Fiction

Antoni Oró Badia (Bilbao, 1957) is a musician, economist and writer. He began in show business as a member of the traditional music group Sac de Cançons. With the children’s theater group Trepadella, for which he founded, he collaborated with Germans Poltrona, Marduix Titelles and Jaume Arnella in several theatrical projects. With Orquestrina Galana he traveled around Catalonia and abroad and released several recordings. With a group of enthusiastic musicians, he promoted the creation of the Centre Artesà Tradicionàrius in the nineties. While working with Solistes de la Costa, he created the record label TRAM-GMI Records. Over the years he has written scripts, teaching content, as well as lyrics and hymns for pirates and villagers.

Xavi Pérez Navarro

Non-fiction

Xavi Pérez (Barcelona, 1983) has a degree in journalism and in advertising and public relations, and has worked at SER and at RAC1 since 2007. He first began working in the newsroom and later moved to El món a RAC1 where he’s worked as program editor, coordinator and deputy director since 2009. He became the station’s content director in May of 2023. El mal invisible is his first book and he has collaborated in the writing of several books.

Bibliography
2017

El mal invisible

Catedral
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Any child is a potential victim of an abuser. Eighty percent of child sexual abuse cases occur within the family. If it’s already difficult to file a lawsuit against a teacher, sometimes waiting years to do so, it must be much more difficult to explain that you have been abused by a parent or grandparent. Victims of sexual abuse need to speak out in order to help others and help themselves as well. They are voices that ask for only one thing: that we listen to them. Invisible Evil shows that if so many children have been sexually abused it’s because the abusers know that we’re ashamed to talk about it, that it’s taboo, and they know they can count on our silence.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Catedral)

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Clara Queraltó

Children & YA
,  
Fiction

Clara Queraltó (Alt Penedès, 1988) is a professor of Catalan language and literature. She has published: El que pensen els alters, Mercè Rodoreda literary prize for short stories and narratives; stories in the anthologies Barcelona Suites and Nits d’estiu; the novel Et diré R.; and the young adult novel Xiular en cas d’emergència. In 2024, she won the Anagrama novel prize for Com el so d’un batec en un micròfon. She also collaborates with RAC1 and El Nacional.

Bibliography
2024

Com el so d'un batec en un micròfon

Anagrama
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2023

Xiular en cas d'emergència

Bindi Books
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2021

Et diré R.

Empúries
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2018

El que pensen els altres

Proa
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With her brand new driver’s license, Gabriela heads to her grandfather’s town to spend the summer there working at her first paid job as a substitute librarian. It’s the San Juan holiday and her mind is spinning with the thickness of her hangover and the lightness of knowing that, soon or later, her friends will forgive her for disappearing yesterday with one of their dates. It wasn’t that bad, she says to herself. Once settled, she rushes off for a swim in her favorite spot at the lake.

With muffled hearing, Quim listens to the owner’s instructions for the house he and his friends have rented for a summer of teleworking and rest. Irritable, the persistent echo from last night’s summer festival, which he’d rather forget, still pulses between his ears like a catchy song. Once settled, he goes out to burn off excesses with the usual dose of exercise, but the chain on the bike he finds in the farmhouse breaks and he switches from pedaling to laps in a nearby lake.

Com el so d’un batec en un micròfon explores the mechanisms of seduction and attraction between opposites. With a refined style and a precision of language, Clara Queraltó has given form to an absorbing and disturbing game of mirrors that works with millimetric precision.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Anagrama)

The protagonist of this story is 10 years old and a good way to introduce her is to explain what she likes. She loves spending afternoons at her grandmother’s house, the smell of mercurochrome and belly aches from laughing too much. She also likes her cat’s soft, fluffy fur. Evidently, there are also things she doesn’t like at all. She doesn’t like to be laughed at for something she has no control of, for example, the hair she has on her legs, arms and a little bit all over her body. This is the story of Mariona and how she stands up to those who hurt her with the help of a little magic and a lot of courage!

Lucía leaves her mother’s home to try to make her way in the big city. When she befriends Talita, another young student who works in a cocktail bar, and moves into her apartment, they share both their joys and anguish together. Everything changes when Lucía gets pregnant. Loneliness, economic precariousness and unrequited love turn her life into one big question mark.

The lifelong friendship between two orphaned girls; a pair of patent leather shoes that represent a precious gift for a six-year-old girl; the son who has had to learn to live with a mother who is an addict; and the riot policeman who cannot stand physical confrontation. These are some of the starting points in this intense collection of stories that deal with feelings such as fear, disappointment, loneliness and guilt. Despite the characters being marginal, these are situations in which anyone can intimately identify with. Because sometimes life forces you to keep going when you would like to stop time, stay in a corner of the past and not have to face what you are inexorably forced to live.

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Pablo Raphael

Fiction

Pablo Raphael (Mexico, 1970) studied political science at Iberoamericana University. He has worked as a literature professor and contributed to the newspapers El País, Milenio, El Universal and El Faro, as well as to several magazines. Together with Guadalupe Nettel, he was editor of the literary magazine Número 0. He is the author of several novels and books of short stories. His essay La fábrica del Lenguaje, S.A. was a finalist for the 2011 Anagrama Essay prize. In early 2012 he took part in the Clipperton Project, an international expedition which traveled to the island of the same name in three ships as a collaborative project between science and art.

Bibliography
2015

Clipperton

Literatura Random House
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2013

Armadura para un hombre solo

Almadía
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2011

La Fábrica del Lenguaje, S.A.

Anagrama
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Clipperton is an island, but it’s also a ghost prison, a museum of failures, and a kingdom where self-proclaimed emperors, captain generals and colonial administrations have ruled. While the cries of idiot birds declaim the true history of those who reigned there, in the darkness of a cell the most distinguished prisoner of the place prepares their legal defense. The final palimpsest presented here explains the reasons for their misfortune. God is imprisoned and about to be sentenced.

From the audio recordings that Jacques Costeau discovered in 1982, from an obsessive weaving of historical data, certain found documents and journalistic notes of various kinds, Pablo Raphael reconstructs a universe in which events constantly blur the border between reality and fiction, between historical chronicle and fantastic fable, to the extent that the island, always on the verge of sinking, manages to endure floating adrift in the reader’s head.

The wealthy master builder Ariel Horus—demiurge and soul of an unfinished skyscraper—has been watching the city for thirty years sitting on the shoulder of his giant. The master builder walks the endless floors of what will one day be the great Hotel de la Ciudad disdaining humanity with the will of a bored god. At times, he is followed by the cordial accountant Diógenes Mayorga, or is prey to the whims of the painter Sebastián Henríquez Escudo, or he’s besieged by the sensuality of Fabiana Serra. All the while, adding new functions and spaces to the only project that can redeem him.

Traveling in the old elevator, the master builder incubates the body of his creature in the corners of a project that is a nation in itself. Whose guests are the garbage, the furniture collected in the street, certain animals, and the rancor that the years accumulate. Here is an architectural chimera as a permanent black work, threatened by chaos and also by the city that lurks.

Our time is that of the decline in the present. Since it’s impossible to build new social pacts, future possibilities are imagined as few. There are no utopias, only a pragmatism that bets on the useful. Our society suffers from the disenchantment of democracy, the logic of the market and globalization, incapable of producing ideas for the future. Which is the way out? Richard Rorty would say: “It is not reason that changes things, but imagination.” From this principle, this book praises disenchanted optimism, where questions are more important than answers.

This is an essay on language, the idea of generations and the aesthetics of contemporary literature; but it is also a denunciation that points out the mechanisms that have caused the estrangement between creation and action, ethics and aesthetics, literature and public space.

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Ana Rodríguez Fischer

Fiction

Ana Rodríguez Fischer (Vegadeo, 1957) is a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Barcelona, where she received her doctorate with the thesis “La obra narrativa de Rosa Chacel.” Her attention to the contemporary Spanish novel gave rise to the essay “Why We Read Novels” as well as to critical editions on the works of José María Guelbenzu, Juan Marsé and Eduardo Mendoza. A literary critic for decades, she currently contributes to Babelia. As a writer, she won the Premio Femenino Lumen for her first novel Objetos extraviados in 1995 and won the Premio de Novela Café Gijón with Antes de que llegue el olvido in 2023.

Bibliography
2024

Antes de que llegue el olvido

Siruela
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One autumn afternoon in 1941, upon arriving in the icy and desolate Chistopol, Anna Akhmatova learns that Marina Tsvietáieva has committed suicide. Twenty years later, before oblivion arrives, Anna breaks her silence by writing a long letter to Marina, in which she tells her about her childhood, her children, her unhappy marriages, her lovers and friends, their common passion for poetry, the wars, the revolution and its aberrations, and the terror and death under the Stalinist yoke. She wants to complete and relive the only encounter they had that same summer in Moscow, when Marina returned from exile. With extensive knowledge of both authors’ works and of the era, Ana Rodríguez Fischer places us in a crucial stage of Russian and European history and brings two exceptional women back to life.

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Maria Sellas Palat

Fiction

Maria Sellas Palat (Barcelona, 1995) has a degree in dentistry. One summer night in 2017, after having written hundreds of stories during her metro rides to the university, she decided to create the Instagram account @segon.tercera, where she shares fragments of what she writes. After winning the University of Barcelona’s I Concurs Literari Lletres de Maig and becoming a finalist for the X Premi Helena Jubany with a collection of short stories, she decided to train as a writer at the Escola d’Escriptura de l’Ateneu Barcelonès.

Bibliography
2024

Drames per a principiants

Univers
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It’s a summer day and, while floating far from the beach, from Marc, and from this invention called adult life, Júlia is happy. Or as happy as one can be when not yet aware that the door to the past is not properly closed.

A blue envelope in the mailbox, which usually only receives bills and advertisements, will have Júlia returning to Montpellier, to reminisce about her exchange year, to visit old friends, and to reconnect with John’s story, a wound that will inevitably threaten the fragile balance she has managed to maintain in her life until then.

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Oriol Vergés

Children & YA

Oriol Vergés (Barcelona, 1939) has a degree in geography and history. He is a prolific author of an important oeuvre for young readers. He has written narratives, short stories, historical novels, theater, and didactic books and contributes to Tretzevents, Cavall Fort and Rodamón magazines. His work was decisive in the revival of Catalan children’s and young adult literature starting in the late 1960s and was awarded the Folch i Torres prize in 1977, the Joaquim Ruyra prize in 1978 and the Crítica Serra d’Or prize for children’s and young adult literature four times.

Laia Vilaseca

Fiction

Laia Vilaseca (Barcelona, 1981) is a writer and journalist passionate about mysteries, true crime and crime novels. In 2021 her novel La chica del vestido azul was published by Suma. It arrived in bookstores after becoming a bestseller during the three years it was self-published on Amazon, where it attracted many more readers and earned her a place as one of the new voices in crime fiction.

Bibliography
2024

L'illa del silenci

Rosa dels vents
More information
2022

Quan la neu es fon

Rosa dels vents
More information
2021

La noia del vestit blau

Rosa dels vents
More information

In 1982, a macabre triple murder in Sant Jordà, a small village in the Catalan Pyrenees, would forever mark the lives of its inhabitants. The bodies were found by the police on Silent Island, a place known for its dark legends and a lure for all those who visit it. After the killer was arrested, Sant Jordà attempts to overcome its past and return to normality. But the island remains paralyzed, incapable of forgetting the terrible events it witnessed.

Years later, Nil, the son of the policeman who handled the case, decides to make a documentary about the tragedy and, as he delves deeper, he discovers that not all the evidence corroborates that the person arrested was the culprit.
When Nil suddenly disappears, his best friend, Emma, is convinced that something has happened to him. But it will take twenty-seven years before Emma, after finding a mysterious envelope under her door, finally discovers the truth about what happened to her friend and the secrets hidden on Silent Island.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Suma)

Yosemite National Park, February 2016. Young college student Jennie Johnson disappears inside the park without a trace. Ranger Nick Carrington is put in charge of investigating the case. The strange circumstances of the disappearance prompt him to write a book in which he recounts the most important findings after realizing that his life is in danger.

Las Vegas, April 2019. Sarah Sorrow, a professional poker player, discovers the identity of her father after several years of searching. Unfortunately, Nick Carrington has died while investigating the disappearance of a young woman. Driven by curiosity, Sarah decides to pull the thread and unravel the truth that connects the two events, unknowingly beginning a puzzle that will become more and more complicated.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Suma)

Martina has just arrived in Treviu, a small mountain village where she’s spent her summers her entire life. She needs to escape Barcelona and there, surrounded by childhood memories, she feels safe. Once installed, she learns that someone has desecrated three graves in the old cemetery. One of them belongs to an unidentified girl who died more than thirty years ago on the Malpàs bridge and that everyone remembers as “the girl in the blue dress.” Everything points to suicide, but her death remains a mystery.

When Martina decides to investigate what happened to the girl, she unknowingly sets in motion a series of events that will lead her into a dangerous adventure. One in which she will have to face someone willing to do everything possible to prevent the secrets of the past from coming to light.

Rights sold: World Spanish (Suma)

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