Blog del Instituto Cervantes de Londres

Nos complace presentaros tanto en soporte papel como en e-book 3 libros de autores españoles de reconocido prestigio traducidos al inglés que acabamos de recibir. Para accede al libro electrónico, hacer clic aquí. Para consultar el catálogo y ver la disponibilidad de los libros en papel, haz clic aquí.

We are happy to present you these three new books that just arrived in our library in paper format and in e-book format. To access the e-books, please click here. To see the availability in paper format, please, click here.

THE FAINT-HEARTED BOLSHEVIK   Lorenzo Silva; Translated by  Nick Caistor and Isabelle Kaufeler

Short-listed for one of the most prestigious literary awards in Spain before being made into a successful film, The Faint-hearted Bolshevik has, over the fifteen years since its first edition, become an undisputed classic of contemporary Spanish literature. One morning in a traffic jam on his way to work, a driver is distracted and slams into the car in front. When the woman driving the other car reacts with a torrent of abuse out of all proportion to the incident, the driver cracks and decides to teach her a lesson, by dedicating his whole summer to ruining this foul woman’s life. But his plans for revenge are thrown by the sudden appearance of Rosana, his intended victim’s compelling teenage sister, and he finds himself and his base instincts severely tested …

 Caught up in this impossible affair, the man’s thoughts turn in moments of weakness to that famous photo of the last Tsar’s daughters, as he tries to put himself in the place of the Bolshevik hired to kill the beautiful Grand Duchess Olga; a man who was surely, just like him, a victim of his own faint-heartedness.

 So, within a story somewhere between comedy, suspense and melodrama, Lorenzo Silva uses his main character to present a vicious critique of today’s world of work, and the inner conflicts of a frustrated middle-aged man, which is at the same time a story of ill-fated love with an unexpected twist.

NOTHING EVER HAPPENS     by José Ovejero;  Translated by Philip H. D. Smith and Graziella de Luis

Carmela and Nico lead a comfortable life in a nice house in the suburbs with their little girl, Berta, their dog, Laika and Olivia, the young immigrant Ecuadorian home help. They have all settled into a cosy daily routine of fixed habits, as day follows day in a peaceful, middle-class pattern in which nothing ever happens. Or does it?
    When Olivia arrives one morning to find blood stains at the entrance of the house, a trail of footprints through the snow leads her and Nico to a discovery that not only slams home the terrifying fragility of life as it shifts suddenly and unexpectedly, but also the simple fact that appearances can be deceptive. Sometimes, beneath the surface calm, there’s a huge storm brewing.
    So, the author takes us calmly, page by page, through the various aspects of each character, peeling away their masks as he goes, until by the end we are left with a stripped landscape revealing the tangled web of hidden stories that lurk beneath the apparent normality. All it takes is someone with a keen eye – someone like José Ovejero – looking through a random keyhole, to show that behind every door, at every moment … something always happens. 

THE HAPPY CITY  by Elvira Navarro; Translated by Rosalind Harvey

“I feel terrible. Although he doesn’t say it, I know he had been hoping the whole time that I would explain it all somehow; but I can’t explain it, because I don’t understand anything.” These disturbing words, almost a distillation of the entire text, close the novel The Happy City by Elvira Navarro, who featured in Granta’s The Best of Young Spanish-language Novelists issue in 2010.
The stories of Chi-Huei—a Chinese boy whose family has come to Spain in search of a better life—and his friend Sara—a girl strangely fascinated by a homeless man—comprise two separate yet complementary sections, presenting the reader with a detailed account of their life circumstances and the nuances of their perspectives: the genuine, as-yet untamed voices through which the book’s pre-adolescent protagonists negotiate the world around them, their initial astonishment finally turning to frustration as they gaze upon their dehumanized society.
A pre-teen’s first faltering steps towards sexuality, social pressures, the way polarized outlooks on life coexist at the core of the same family, those first experiences of disillusionment as we awaken into the adult world: these are some of the themes that Navarro lays out for her readers in order to reveal, with razor-sharp control, the constant duality that exists between the outward appearance of things and their inner reality.