Acantilado Acantilado Quaderns Crema Rights Catalogue 2016-2017
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Llom: 5,25 mm. calculat per a 112 pàgines, en paper de 90 gm/m2 acantilado quaderns crema rights catalogue 2016-2017 acantilado Rafael Argullol Theological-Erotic Treatise Fiction (2016) short stories In this brief treatise, taken from the book Visión desde el fondo 96 pages del mar (View from the Bottom of the Sea) Rafael Argullol offers a philosophical allegory of our condition of strangers in the world and the possibility of returning to the mythical state in which nature was a true home. «Not only had man been expelled from Paradise, but God, too, had gone, leaving it deserted. Paradise remained uninhabited and, ever since then, kept tempting us, God and ourselves, with the possibility of going back. But, faced with the dictatorship of time, we were cowards. God tempted us, Go back! We tempted Him, Go back! An iron veil prevented us from listening. So Paradise would always remain empty. We needed to be seduced again. If we seduced God into going back we’d find that he, too, wants to return». rafael argullol (Barcelona, 1949), Professor of Aesthetics and Theory of Art at the University of Barcelona, is a writer, poet and essayist. He has written more than twenty-five books in diverse literary genres, including novels, essays and poetry. acantilado rights catalogue 2016 9 Rafael Argullol Rafael Argullol The Reason for Evil My Spectral Gaudí A strange phenomenon occurs in a «In my years at university, we strove to prosperous cosmopolitan western city. capture what was new and rebellious Apparently just an annoying setback at about the twentieth century and, in this first, it very quickly turns into a much regard, Gaudí was last in the line. As a more insidious threat, capable of over- non-enrolled student I sat in on some turning the citizens’ most intimate con- courses in the School of Architecture victions. With this chronicle of a phe- where, supposedly knowing what I was Fiction nomenon which affects every strata of about, I learned to detest Gaudí’s work. Fiction society, Argullol re-creates the process It was a conclusion I reached, not with- (2015) of its disintegration, from denunciation, out inner pain because I was very fond (2015) novel fear and suspicion through to pillage, of the spectre that had abruptly ap- literary essay 224 pages magic and superstition. In the midst of peared in my life when I was still a child, 80 pages chaos, an amorous relationship is se- and much of that early magnetism had Winner of the renely constructed, immersed in the stayed with me. Yet I couldn’t deny the Nadal Prize, time required to restore a mythological evidence. On Gaudí’s side, there were 1993 painting in which the artist dares to in- two or three old-fogey professors who vite the viewer to dream of another des- were horribly stuck in the past, unani- Rights sold: tiny for Orpheus and Eurydice. Argullol mously deemed to be dyed-in-the-wool Serbian reminds the reader of the all-important traditionalists and, still worse, incompe- geopoetika value of lucidity and memory. Looking tent. On the other side, all the young back, as Orpheus did, after he had res- lecturers, without exception, guided us Italian cued his beloved from Hades, does not along other paths, filling us with their lindau necessarily lead to condemnation. enthusiasm for the modern movement and Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright. Gaudí was the «This is both an inquiry into evil and a reflection on irrationality». antithesis». La Vanguardia «A lucid interpreter of culture, Rafael Argullol is a «This book has an allegorical feel». El Mundo cogent essayist. Moreover, he’s a traveller who combines what he’s experienced with what he’s read, «The novel reflects on the dangers of irrationality and, more broadly, but his writing never descends into bland mannerisms. on memory and oblivion». El País Herein lies the pleasure one has reading his measured prose, guided by the clarity of his thinking». El País 10 acantilado rights catalogue 2016 acantilado rights catalogue 2016 11 Rafael Argullol Ádám Bodor Lampedusa: Sinistra’s District A Mediterranean Story One day, Andrej Bodor, arrives in the Sinistra district, a closed, mountainous Suffused with the cultural richness of border area, in search of his stepson who, the Mediterranean world, a variegated rumour has it, is living there in self-im- human landscape in which grandeur posed exile. From this point on, his life and decadence often intermingle, the will never be the same… This work is small island of Lampedusa is the back- about an abandoned city where everyone Fiction ground of this story. The novel revolves seems destined for tragedy. People keep Fiction around a woman of mysterious beauty disappearing, as if by magic but they also (2008) and Leonardo Carracci, whose passion come back showing no sign of abnormal- (2003) novel for the unknown drives his life to a ity. This is a dictatorship headed by a novel 144 pages point of fulfilment that is indistinguish- group of hunters who subjugate the 208 pages able from utter destruction. This is the mountain people. With its poignant Rights sold: story of a disquieting initiation, univer- beauty, El distrito de Sinistra is a last cry La Vanguardia’s Italian sal in the scope of its themes and poetic for help in the quest for humanity. Best Book of lantana vision. Firmly rooted in the European Foreign Fiction, tradition of the Bildungsroman, Lampe- 2003 Serbian dusa, drawing from state-of-the-art geopoetika «A journey through lyricism and trends in contemporary Spanish litera- «With its stunning prose and black humour, this is an intense visual Rights sold: evocations of a time and place ture, is an elegant and engaging novel by evocation of the harshness of nature». Words Without Borders English which, it would seem, do not one of Spain’s foremost literary figures. (Worldwide) new exist». La Vanguardia «Ádám Bodor is a narrator of wonderful stories which are yet to be directions discovered». Die Zeit French editions «It would be difficult to find in contemporary European literature a cambourakis darker, more brutal yet more lyrical satire than this book». El País ádám bodor (Cluj-Kolozsvár, Romania, 1936) was arrest- Other works in fiction by the author: ed and imprisoned by the political police in 1952 but was Vision from the Bottom of the Sea released in 1954. He left his native Transylvania in 1982 to settle in Budapest, where he still lives, working as an editor. Considered by many to be one of the most important fig- (2010) literary essay ures in contemporary Hungarian literature, he won the Hungarian Literary Prize in 2002. His highly-charged nov- 1216 pages els are very pithy and poetically condensed. City of Barcelona Prize, 2010. Cálamo Prize, 2010. 12 acantilado rights catalogue 2016 acantilado rights catalogue 2016 13 Ádám Bodor Ádám Bodor The Section The Archbishop’s Visit In La Sección there are small bottles and The inhabitants of a village in the Car- mouldy salamis. Neither clothes nor pathian Mountains are getting ready for products have their own label and every- a visit from an elusive archbishop. Mean- body wears muddy boots. The job of the while, in the background, a coup d’état is Section inmates is to keep the tempera- being plotted while the main character Fiction ture down in order to please the weasels, Gabriel Ventuza goes to great lengths to Fiction the real owners of the place. Gizella retrieve the remains of his murdered fa- (2007) (2005) Weisz has been sent here but we are not ther, the notorious human trafficker, Vic- short novel told how or why. In Kafka only one per- tor Ventuza. stories 136 pages son is chosen but in this brief, intense 64 pages story Bodor incorporates the whole of Rights sold to: society and everyone suffers the conse- Basque quences. elkarlanean «The beauty of this marvellous treasure needs to be «A transgressive, exultant work». La Vanguardia proclaimed. A true find».La Vanguardia «A clear, refined style, verging on poetry».El Periódico «One of the most perfect books I have come across in recent years». El País 14 acantilado rights catalogue 2016 acantilado rights catalogue 2016 15 Gregorio Casamayor Gregorio Casamayor The Life and Deaths & A. G. Porta of Ethel Jurado Another Life in the Suitcase «Ethel Jurado had approached the group to beg for help» Marcos Recaj, Co-authored by Gregorio Casamayor one of the main characters of the book, and A. G. Porta, this book tells the story reveals. «And we offered her our whole- of África Bonal, who after eight years in hearted support. Her need for help was prison, decides to reveal to a couple of Fiction so great, her situation so precarious that, Fiction alleged journalists what she believes is without having planned it and perhaps the true story of her mother, Natalia (2011) unconsciously, Ethel insinuated herself (2012) Bonal, a writer who is better known by novel into our lives, colonising them to such an novel her pen name, Virginia Solano and 304 pages extreme that, for a time, everything we 240 pages whose life before her literary success is a did and everything we experienced re- mystery. This is the story of an innocent Rights sold: volved around her personal tragedy and, lie which, in order to not to be discov- English (World) without our being aware of it, she ered, leads to other lies, half-truths, hispabooks changed our lives, or at least mine, forev- small distortions and whole range of er. If we’d been really brave, we’d have falsehoods.