What They’re Reading in Spain

The Guardian has been doing a pretty cool feature where they ask editors in various countries what the hot books are where they are. The most recent entry is Spain, and I thought I’d mention it here since there are some pretty strong resonances with coverage in recent issues of The Quarterly Conversation. In particular, Antonio J. Rodríguez’s recent essay “A few keys to understanding Spanish contemporary fiction, and five authors to—at least—enjoy it.”

For instance, Javier Cercas’ Anatomy of a Moment, which was just published in English and which we just reviewed quite favorably in TQC 23, is still doing quite well in Spain.

Looking a little further back, Anatomía de un instante (Mondadori) by Javier Cercas is one of those essay/fiction books that is so linked to a real – and brutal – event that it not only managed to hypnotise Spanish readers at the time of its well-publicised launch many months ago, but still manages to do so now. The recent commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the attempted coup d’état by a group of military officers, on 23 February 1981 (the real pretext for this work of literary pseudo-fiction), has helped to maintain interest in Cercas’s book.

Also, funny to see that Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas–another book we covered a while back–was apparently “rescued” (from oblivion?), whatever that means:

Roberto Bolaño, one of the most popular authors in Spain, although he was Chilean, is another strong presence just now, thanks to Anagrama having rescued his book La literatura nazi en América.

Of course, the big book on everybody’s radar in Spain is the new Javier Marias, Los enamoramientos. Or, well, almost everybody’s. Our Madrid editor tells me that Marias has won himself few friends among the younger generation of authors in Spain, whom, it seems, Marias tends to go out of his way to insult.

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