THE SELECTED STORIES OF MERCÉ RODOREDA
Mercé Rodoreda
Translated from the Spanish by Martha Tennant
Collected here are thirty-one of Mercé Rodoreda's most moving and challenging stories, presented in chronological order of their publication from three of Rodoreda's most beloved short story collections: Twenty-Two Stories, It Seemed Like Silk and Other Stories, and My Christina and Other Stories. These stories capture Rodoreda's full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating tradition.
Mercé Rodoreda (1908–1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories that would make her internationally famous, while at the same time earning a living as a seamstress. In the mid-1960s she returned to Catalonia, where she continued to write.
Open Letter, paperback, 9781934824313 (February)
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THE SCALE OF MAPS
Belén Gopegui
Translated from the Spanish by Mark Schafer
Sergio Prim is a staid, middle-aged geographer. The romantic advances of Brezo Varela, a lively young woman who shares his profession, induce a series of terrifying hallucinations from which he attempts to seek refuge by immersing himself in the quest to map a place in which love never results in disillusionment. A lyrical examination of language, imagination, and desire.
Belén Gopegui was born in Madrid in October 1963. In 1993, she burst onto the Spanish literary scene with her first novel, La escala de los mapa (The Scale of Maps). Her masterful debut bowled over critics, winning both the Tigre Juan Prize and the "Santiago del Nuevo Extremo" Iberoamerican Prize for First Novel. Since then, Gopegui has published six more novels, and her work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Turkish, Serbian, Finnish, and Dutch.
City Lights Publishers, paperback, 9780872865105 (January)
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FROM THE LAND OF THE MOON
Milena Agus
Translated by Ann Goldstein
An young unnamed woman reflects the life of her grandmother, a bewitching and eccentric figure whose abiding search for love spans much of the twentieth century. In 1943, as American bombs fall on the city of Cagliari, the young woman's grandmother is thirty and already considered an old maid, unmarried and still living at home with her parents. But when the bombing ceases, and despite her protests, her father forces her to marry the first man to propose, an older widower she doesn't love. After suffering several miscarriages, she is sent for treatment at a spa on the mainland, where she falls in love with an injured Italian army veteran and nine months later gives birth to a son. Attributing the pregnancy to her spa treatment, she returns to her husband and never reveals the affair. Decades later, she returns to the mainland and travels to her former lover's hometown of Milan. Dressed in her finest coat and shoes, she wanders the streets in search of the elusive veteran.
Milena Agus was a finalist for the Strega and Campiello prizes, and was awarded the prestigious Zerilli-Marimó prize for Mal di petra (From the Land of the Moon). It is her first novel. Agus lives in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy.
Europa Editions, paperback, 9781609450014
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A SHORTCUT TO PARADISE
Teresa Solana
Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush
The shady, accident-prone private detective twins Eduard Martinez and Borja "Pep" Masdeu are back. Another murder beckons, and this time the victim is one of Barcelona's literary glitterati. Marina Dolç, media figure and writer of best-sellers, is murdered in the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona on the night she wins an important literary prize. The killer has battered her to death with the trophy she has just won, an end identical to that of the heroine in her prize-winning novel. The same night the Catalan police arrest their chief suspect, Amadeu Cabestany, runner-up for the prize. Borja and Eduard are hired to prove his innocence. The unlikely duo is plunged into the murky waters of the Barcelona publishing scene and need all their wit and skills of improvisation to solve this case of truncated literary lives.
Teresa Solana was born in Barcelona in 1962 where she currently lives. She directed the National Translation Centre in Spain for seven years and now devotes her time to writing her own novels and translating them into Spanish. She advocates the therapeutic qualities of humour, and her novels are a blend of merciless satire and detective thriller. A Not So Perfect Crime, her first novel, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for best noir in Catalan and A Shortcut to Paradise, her second, was short-listed for the 2008 Salambó Prize for best novel in Catalan.
Bitter Lemon Press, paperback, 9780701184223
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BAR BALTO
Faïza Guène
Translated from the French by Sarah Ardizzone
This novel is many things: a gripping whodunit, a shaggy dog story, a series of hilarious monologues and an insight into the human stories that lie behind banal, blind, unthinking, everyday racism. Handled with her hallmark provocative wit and delightful levity, this is a departure from Faïze's first two hugely successful novels which shows her flexing her literary muscles and extending her range as a writer of supreme talent. But, in her own words, this novel is a continuation of her ongoing theme of 'the invisible people in society'. Darkly disturbing, staggeringly impressive, Bar Balto is also a blast—showing off Guèen's brilliance as a ventriloquist and her growing skill as a storyteller and social observer who can not be ignored.
Chatto & Windus, paperback, 9780701184223 (January)
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RED WOLF: A NOVEL
Liza Marklund
Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith
In the middle of the freezing winter, a journalist is murdered in the northern Swedish town of Lulea. Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon suspects that the killing is linked to an attack against an air base in the late sixties. Against the explicit orders of her boss, Annika continues her investigation of the death, which is soon followed by a series of shocking murders.
Annika quickly finds herself drawn into a spiral of terrorism and violence centered around a small communist group called The Beasts. Meanwhile, her marriage starts to slide, and in the end she is not only determined to find out the truth, but also forced to question her own husband's honesty.
Liza Marklund is an author, journalist, columnist, and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. She is also the co-owner of the publishing house PiratfÖrlaget. Since her debut in 1995, Liza Marklund has written ten novels and one nonfiction book. Her crime novels featuring the gutsy reporter Annika Bengtzon instantly became an international hit, and Marklund's books have sold 9 million copies in 30 languages to date.
Atria (US), hardcover, 9781451602067 (February)
Corgi (UK), paperback, 9780552162319
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