Ramón Villeró (Spanish Edition)

I think it just got over-shadowed by Pillars because Opriah made Pillars a pick for her book club. Cathedral just got washed under by that tidal wave. There was so much history of Barcelona in that book that I found fascinating.

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Things like the fact that it was a free city and not under the rule of any monarch until much later in the history of the Spanish Empire makes it unique. This inspired me to read another book of essays about Barcelona that you have also read. This book is part of the National Geographic Directions series. The Great Enchantress by Robert Hughes. I like that National Geographic series and have been trying to read one book a year from it. If I can't travel overseas, I can at least read about it from some very good authors.

Last summer I read an highly recommend Ornament of the World: It made my personal Best Reads of the Year for list. There was a wonderful BBC radio series done about the Muslims in Spain titled "Cross and the Crescent'' that I recommend to school teachers for use in the classroom that inspired me to find out more about Medieval Spain. I learned about the Pepe Carvalho mysteries them from a series on international mysteries that was done by the BBC a couple of years ago.

An Olympic Death, published just after the Barcelona games, makes fascinating reading in a London also struggling with the cost and legacy of hosting the event. There are actually 26 Pepe Carvalho mysteries, per this series page http: Thanks for that excellent insight into Spain and Portugal, deebee! Thanks for your offer to help out with this group read! Don't feel committed to doing anything, as I know that you're busy, but any information about Portugal and its writers, culture, etc. I'm currently exploring lesser known in the English speaking world 20th and 21st authors, especially women writers, who have, ideally, two or more books that have been translated into English and are readily available.

I've found a small handful of Spanish women writers, but not Portuguese ones yet. If you could do that, and let us know about up and coming Portuguese writers of either gender who are worth knowing about, even if their works haven't been translated into English yet, that would be very helpful. I'm also in the process of exploring online resources for Spanish writers, including the Hispabooks Publishing page, which is an independent publisher that is putting out books by acclaimed young Spanish authors in English translation, and lletrA , a resource for Catalan authors, past and present.

I'll probably join you for Knowledge of Hell and definitely for Obabakoak , as I own both books. I'll be curious to get your take on Count Julian , as I own but haven't read yet anything by Juan Goytisolo. I was blown away by Blindness , which was the first book I read by Saramago, not long after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Thanks for mentioning Death in the Afternoon , Kerry. I have a collection of Hemingway's books, so I'll have to see if that one is included in it. I do own the book On Bullfighting by A. Kennedy, which is less than pages in length, so I think I'll add that to my ever growing books to read this quarter.

I also read a superb book about the legendary bullfighter Manolete many years ago which was quite memorable, but I'm sure that I no longer own it, and I'll have to see if I can find the title of it. I'm glad that the author spotlight of Matilde Asensi encouraged you to buy Checkmate in Amber. Dec 8, , 5: Since you've traveled to Spain extensively, Kerry, feel free to post information, photos, recommendations, etc. Thanks for your enthusiastic recommendation of Roads to Santiago , Benita. I'll probably read Cathedral By the Sea , as I walked past but didn't enter Santa Maria del Mar , the 14th century church located in Barcelona's El Born neighborhood, on my way to the Museu Picasso last year; here's a photo I took of it: Thanks for information, Charlotte; I'll check out that Guardian article later today or tomorrow.

Mar 30, , 8: Darryl, do you plan to open new threads for the sub-topics or do you prefer everything to be in one place this thread? There are advantages and disadvantages to each, of course, but it's your call: Below is a short write-up which offers some insights on Iberian poetry and languages. I'm not sure why Basque and Galego are not included here, though I would hazard that the latter may also have been included under Portuguese.

Even at this stature, she has not been widely translated. Among her works which also include children's books, essays and a play , only two are available in English The Painter of Birds, The Murmuring Coast of which only one seems easily accessible. I've not read The Murmuring Coast but have seen the movie adaptation.

It is a beautiful and haunting story. Here's a peek https: The wars were waged in 3 different countries at once Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea from to the Portuguese revolution in The theme dominates the novels of Antonio Lobo Antunes, for example, in terms of what it did to the lives of soldiers who fought the wars. Going back to poetry and women, I'd like to share a very beautiful piece by Florbela Espanca who lived between She lived a short, tumultous life and died by barbiturate overdose. Her wikipedia page is, however, only in Portuguese http: When I can squeeze it in, and have good internet doubtful, though, as it is in Central Asia!

Thanks for this great information and ideas, deebee! I'd lean towards keeping all of the information about this theme in one thread, although I'd like to get input from others. As you said, I can see pros and cons to both approaches. I see that my local alma mater, Emory University, has a copy of the English language version of it, but it's at the Oxford College campus library 45 minutes outside of the city, so I seriously doubt that I'll read it.

The film clip of it is very interesting, though. However, I found this translated web page which contains information about her, and excerpts from her work: Have a safe and pleasant trip to Asia! For those who'd like to explore Portuguese literature further than Saramago or Lobo Antunes, Carcanet Press, an independent UK publishing company, has the most extensive range of works translated into English.

The list of these books appear under the heading "Aspects of Portugal. I have a few of these which I picked up from random book fairs in Lisbon, but have not read them yet. What about works about Portugal? I believe it is translated from the German. It was a novel that stayed with me for a long time after reading it. I also found that Small Death in Lisbon and Company of Strangers were very much about what happened during the dictatorship of Salazar and its effect on the population of Portugal.

www.newyorkethnicfood.com: La niña del mar (Spanish Edition) eBook: Ramón Villeró: Kindle Store

I know very little about it, so it should be quiet a discovery about discovery. Thanks for posting the Carcanet Press link here, deebee. Works about Portugal and the rest of the Iberian peninsula written by non-Iberian authors definitely count, Benita. Thanks for mentioning Night Train to Lisbon , as I own it but haven't read it yet. Ah, I had forgotten that Pereira Declares is set in Portugal. I loved that book, and would highly recommend it. I'm glad that you'll be joining us, and I look forward to your comments about The Lusiads.

I read the Penguin Classics Atkinson translation of The Lusiads a few years ago and found it deadly dull. It's in prose and more-or-less in the style of the minutes of a committee meeting. Very efficient if you want a crib for the original, but not much fun to read for pleasure. I'm sure there's a livelier version somewhere. I doubt that it's a complete list, as I found and purchased one book earlier this morning, Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal, which is supposedly a classic novella of Catalan literature that was recently released in English translation by Peirene Press.

As I find more books and get more recommendations from all of you I'll add them to that list. Stone in a Landslide is very good. Quite by accident I wasn't thinking of the theme read at all when I chose it from my TBR shelf I just finished a novel that fits this category: It doesn't seem to be available in English, but there is a German and I think also a Dutch translation.

I enjoyed it a great deal and managed to finish it in a single weekend.

I'm finding this a rather difficult book to review. And Du Maurier's novel is, I think, ultimately a helpful point of comparison. The novel does not fortunately attempt to imitate Rebecca , but the way it builds its narrative effect is similar: In brief although I don't want to give away too much of the plot: So much is clear. These basic facts are clear. In other words, this is a literary thriller of the sort that has become popular in recent years, and the underlying premise is essentially the same as, for example, A.

In fact, it reminded me quite a bit of Possession --again, not in a derivative sense, but rather because it has the same sense of the investigation taking on a life of its own and capturing all those involved within its spell, and of completely unexpection passions being unleashed. At first I doubted the effectiveness of this narrative choice, but in the course of the novel the reasons for the choice became clear: As we gradually come to understand the scars they bear and the misunderstandings that have shaped their lives, we also understand their reasons for choosing to remain silent about what they know.

Although the suspense of the story depends on the plot or rather, our process of piecing it together , it is the characters and the psychological drama that ultimately make the novel successful. And an illustration of how we all create our own stories of the past, stories that are incomplete and distorted by our wishes and fears, and what happens when these stories are called into question.

Apr 1, , 4: Enjoying the list, and reviews very much.

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It's in translation from the Galician by Jonathan Dunne. I'm enjoying it, but its proving hard work as there are disparate strands across time, often without any clear indication of the connection between them. ETA Another pages on, and its all coming together nicely: Great job on setting up this thread. This is a treasure trove of information and reading recommendations. What a great resource.

Your efforts are much appreciated. From Portugal, I discovered Eca de Queiros a few years ago, and he is now one of my favorite 19th century novelists. On my shelf, from which I hope to read at least 3 or 4 over the next quarter are: I have his My Father's Wives on the shelf. I may also try to read Homage to Catalonia by Orwell.

I'm glad that you liked Stone in a Landslide , Anne. I'll probably read it in June. Great review of Disfraces terribles , Brenda. You're right, it doesn't seem to be available in English translation. I look forward to your comments about Books Burn Badly , Charlotte. I agree with your recommendation of Soldiers of Salamis. However, I'd suggest that Mia Couto , who is also of Portuguese descent and was born in Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony in Africa, wouldn't qualify based on residence he works as an environmental biologist in the Mozambican capital of Maputo.

I'm open to discussion about this, and I certainly won't quibble with anyone who chooses to read a book by him. He would qualify if any of his books are set in the Iberian peninsula, as would those written by any non-Iberians e. Apr 2, , I read Ornament of the World last summer and loved it and want to read more about that place and time.

For what it's worth, I felt The Book of Chameleons seemed more "European" than "African" in that most of the characters were of European descent. I'll probably hold off on reading The Book of Chameleons for this quarter, then. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous I found this classic work of Spanish literature mildly entertaining, definitely satiric, and undoubtedly much more shocking when it was written hence, the anonymous authorship than it is today.

Narrated by Lazaro himself, it tells the tale of his work as a servant for various, mostly harsh and, indeed, abusive, masters, starting with a blind man when he was but a boy, and progressing through working for a penniless squire who nonetheless acts as if he has money but doesn't deign to work, various, largely corrupt, representatives of the church, and a constable, eventually achieving a position of his own in government. This allows the anonymous author much opportunity for satire, as well as the opportunity to show the hardships prevalent in 16th century Spain.

I found the chapter in which Lazaro works for a seller of indulgences especially funny, but overall I didn't enjoy this book as much as the introduction by Juan Goytisolo led me to believe I would. As an added note, this is said to be the first picaresque novel. Nada by Carmen Laforet, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman This semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, written in when the author was 22 years of age, is widely considered to be one of the best novels of the post-Spanish Civil War period.

It was largely unknown in the English speaking world until Edith Grossman's translation of it was published in It won the inaugural Premio Nadal, one of the oldest and most prestigious Spanish literary prizes, in , and it continues to be widely read more than 70 years after its initial publication. The novel opens in Barcelona in , shortly after the Civil War has ended, as Andrea, an 18 year old orphan from the country who has won a scholarship and a small stipend to the Universtat de Barcelona, arrives in the city.

She intends to stay with her grandmother on Carrer d'Aribau in the city's well to do L'Eixample neighborhood, in a home that she remembers fondly from her stay there as a young child. The Civil War has been devastating to the residents of Barcelona, including Andrea's grandmother and her family. What was once an opulent and spacious apartment is now one half of its original size, decaying and filthy, and filled with decrepit relics from her grandparents' former wealth.

Andrea provides a powerful description of the main bathroom on the night of her arrival, as she prepares to take a shower: That bathroom seemed like a witches' house. The stained walls had traces of hook-shaped hands, of screams of despair. Everywhere the scaling walls opened their toothless mouths, oozing dampness. Over the mirror, because it didn't fit anywhere else, they'd hung a macabre still life of pale bream and onions against a black background. Madness smiled from the bent faucets. The sense of claustrophobia and inhospitality is intensified by Andrea's extended family, and their struggles with poverty and hunger.

Her grandmother, once a proud and virile matriarch, is now a senile and frail old woman, who doesn't recognize Andrea at first, and she confuses her with Gloria, her beguiling but maddening daughter in law. The family members routinely engage in bitter and sometimes violent arguments, similar to the characters in Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist play No Exit , and Andrea is frequently dragged into the middle of these heated battles.

Andrea finds respite from this house of horrors in her studies, and especially in the company of her classmate and best friend Ena, a beautiful girl from a merchant family whose wealth and social standing have not been adversely affected by the war. As the novel proceeds, Andrea's sense of independence grows, while at the same time she recognizes that she needs intimacy and friendship as an essential balance to the chaos and increasingly disturbing behavior of her family and her best friend. However, she is caught in the middle of a contracting whirlwind surrounded by these characters, one that she has little control over and that threatens her own sanity.

Nada is a fascinating and superbly written novel about adolescence, despair and escape, set in a city under siege that is attempting to regain its footing and former glory after a crippling war. Coming to this a bit late. Great job by kidzdoc as I would expect. The one major name I see missing from the 20th century would be Miguel Delibes author of The hedge and Five hours with Mario.

My favorite though would be his The stuff of heroes which is set during the Spanish Civil War. Delibes was nominated at least once for the Nobel and is a very important Spanish writer. The Mexican writer Homero Aridjis wrote his The lord of the last days --an apocalyptic novel set in Spain and centered around the year and the wars and conflicts between the adherents of Mohammed and the adherents of Christ. Apr 5, , 8: I was directed to this thread by avatiakh since I am on a Portuguese literature-kick at the moment. Great thread with some extremely helpful information. If I may offer a tip for those of you reading in English, if you have a choice of editions for the book you want to read and one of the choices is translated by Margaret Jull Costa , go for her translation - she is a wonder!

My own thread in the group is very much dormant, unfortunately, but I'll be following this thread eagerly to see what everyone comes up with. Also, if there are any short story readers in the group, I've recently realized that Eugenio Lisboa has edited a few collections of short stories by Portuguese authors, some of whom have not been translated into English before.

Again, thanks to everyone on the thread for great suggestions!! I finished Books Burn Badly a couple of days ago as part of the Iberian challenge. The author was new to me, and I picked this book up several years ago, got about thirty pages in and abandoned it for something else. I'm really glad that I picked it up again though, because it is a fascinating book. I think I can guess I can't remember why I put it down in the first place. This is a weighty book, and it makes no concessions to ignorance of Spanish history or geography. I ended up googling at several points. It also plays fast and loose with chapter labels, reaches across time and omits character names.

Don't expect to know who is being thrown in the river until a couple of pages into the chapter. Don't expect to know why or how it links to the actions of the other characters until much later on. This complicated structure may be frustrating but it also enables the gradual build up of a picture of the impact of the overthrow of the democratically elected Republican government, and the years of dictatorship on one town. The local celebrity boxer who faces down the fascists, the municipal gardener forced to dispose of book ashes after the fires, the former republican who returns twenty years later only to find Franco's government aren't as willing to forgive as they claimed.

The nun doing deals on the side for the sake of the orphans in her care. The Judge trying to justify his increasingly nonsensical decisions, whilst searching for a rare book that may or may not have survived the fascists' book burning. The young man who was born nine months after the coup, and promptly given away to the nuns. Can't recommend it highly enough, and I'm keen to read more of his work - much of which is translated into English from the Galician e.

The Carpenter's Pencil and All is Silence. Apr 7, , 7: Darryl, this is a wonderful thread. Just reading through it, I feel like I'm getting a better sense of the possibilities for this challenge. I kind of want to get a copy of The History of the Siege of Lisbon , too, but I know I won't get to so many in this quarter! Books Burn Badly sounds fascinating. I loved The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

Tristana is an orphaned year-old, entrusted to and taken in by an old family friend who tried to help her parents when they fell on hard times. But she is able to go out with Saturna when she goes shopping or visits her son, who she had to place in an institution when her husband died and she had to go to work, and in the course of one of these excursions she meets a young artist, Horacio.

Of course, they fall in love, and talk talk talk about their love, his art, and his unhappy childhood. But Tristana is enlivened not only by love but also by her innate imagination and ability to think, as we would now say, outside the box. She develops a love for and skill at painting and drawing, once they progress to Horacio's studio; reads literature; and declares she never wants to marry but wants to have her own work which will support her. And this in 19th century Spain! She turns out to be enormously talented at languages, and eventually music, too. But things do not go well.

Don Lope, of course, has his suspicions. Horacio has to take his elderly aunt to a house he owns near the Mediterranean, and the lovers correspond daily. I found this section, with their endless epistolary expressions of love, tedious. And then, Tristana has a very serious health crisis, which in turn provokes Don Lope to discover he truly cares about her "as a daughter" and to realize that the relationship with Horatio will come to naught because of both changes in Tristana and Horacio's reaction to the aftermath of her health problem.

The changes in Tristana because of this crisis and its aftermath are not entirely hard to believe, but they also seem to be very dependent on a a time and a place. I found the conclusion of the novel depressing, but the last lines of it are brilliant.

All in all, I'm glad I read this book. Parts of it were, as I said, tedious, and overall I found it hard to read, but it was a fascinating portrait of two people, Tristana and Don Lope. Many of his novels have been translated into English, but he remains largely unknown and underappreciated outside of his own country. He was born in Lisbon, decided that he would become a writer at the age of seven, but attended medical school at the University of Lisbon at the behest of his father, a respected neurologist.

Antunes specialized in psychiatry, and after his graduation he served in Angola during his country's war with its former African colonies Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, which lasted from Fado Alexandrino is a complex individual and societal psychological portrait set in Lisbon as five former soldiers reunite on the 10th anniversary of their troop's return from Mozambique, and reflect on the disillusionment they experienced during the war and during the coup that overturned Portugal's right wing government. In Act of the Damned , a formerly wealthy Portuguese family is forced to flee the country in the face of accusations against it, and as the patriarch lies dying the "depraved and the retarded" heirs turn on each other to lay claim to the remains of his former estate.

And Other Writings , which consists of humorous and insightful personal chronicles that he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Portugal, along with short but evocative fictionalized accounts of working class people in Lisbon, which I found to be touching and, at times, almost unbearably sad. Antunes continues to write and to work in a clinic in his native Lisbon.

April-June 2015: The Iberian Peninsula

Books I've read by Antunes: And Other Writings Books I own and plan to read: The characters Carvalho encounters mirror the changes being wrought in Barcelona itself: The mystery itself is not so much a murder mystery a mystery of character and hidden and disguised agendas and actions. Thankfully, it did not have the violence in many of the previous works I've read in this series; disappointingly, not all have been translated into English, so the death of one regular character came as surprise, as well as the changed relationship with another.

I may have to use mail order. Apr 16, , 1: I just read The Goldsmith's Secret for this challenge. This beautiful, but short novel opens with a man reflecting on his failure to get over his one true love. A goldsmith, hence the title, he has a job in New York, and is successful.

Travelling in Spain, on a whim, he steps off at his former home town. He left, broken-hearted, at the end of a love affair with an older woman. But the town is not as he remembered it: Evocative without whitewashing living in a small catholic town under Franco, this was a lovely read. Outlaws by Javier Cercas, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean A Spanish journalist decides to write a biography about Antonio Gamallo, better known by his nickname of Zarco, a boy from a broken home in a poverty stricken neighborhood who led a gang of teenage bandits in the Catalonian city of Girona in the years immediately following Franco's death in , until he was finally caught and imprisoned after a failed bank robbery.

He spent the remainder of his adult life in prison, where he continually tormented his guards and the Spanish legal system as he publicly denounced his lengthy prison sentence in interviews and the two books he wrote. Zarco developed a heroin addiction during his wild teenage years, which continued in prison, and it led to his death from AIDS in the early s. The unnamed journalist decides to interview those who knew Gamallo best, in an effort to distinguish between Antonio, the flawed man, and Zarco, the legendary persona adored by many.

Many unanswered questions and mysteries about what happened on the day of Zarco's capture and the events that led up to it have persisted in each of the three main characters' minds for two decades. Each of them holds onto their secrets tightly, and what is divulged to the other two, and ultimately to the journalist, is often dubious and unreliable. Numerous songs were written in honor of him after his death as well.

Outlaws is an outstanding page turner of a novel, filled with twists and unexpected revelations around sudden turns in the narrative. Although Zarco is the focus of the book, the lives of Gafitas and Tere are just as captivating, and the mysterious and uncertain relationships between the three held my interest from the first page to the last. In keeping with my other most favorite novels I could easily start reading it again now, and I certainly will do so in the near future.

Apr 16, , 2: Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal This novella is set in a small Catalonian town in the early 20th century, narrated by a young woman in a farm town who is sent to live with her childless maternal aunt and her husband as a 13 year old girl. She works hard for them, marries the love of her life, and lives contentedly with her husband, children and her aunt and uncle until tragedy befalls them during the Spanish Civil War.

I found Stone in a Landslide to be an evocative description of life in a small Spanish town, which was well written and mildly interesting but ultimately forgettable. Apr 17, , 7: Almudena Grandes Spain, Almudena Grandes is one of the best selling and most widely respected contemporary Spanish writers. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.

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Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jan 15, Molly Ison rated it it was ok Shelves: Tries to emulate Le Petit Prince without any redeeming sense of humor. A relationship between an adult man and a little girl is harder to convey, and without any character building, the instant declaration that the narrator will stay on the island with the girl even if a ship comes feels less like deep friendship after less than a day and more like Humbert Humbert.

I'm willing to attribute the bits about her lustrous hair and radiant eyes and the embracing to a double transl Treacly. I'm willing to attribute the bits about her lustrous hair and radiant eyes and the embracing to a double translation issue - that is, I'm not insinuating that the author was implying an inappropriate relationship, as those phrases were translated from Catalan to Spanish by a translator to English by me.