‘European Book Club’ Spanish session 2011

Monday June 13th, 06:30 pm

Library ‘Jorge Luis Borges’

 Instituto Cervantes. 211 East 49th St.

Moderated by Alejandro Alonso-Nogueira, professor of Contemporary Peninsular Literatures at Brooklyn College and at the CUNY Graduate Center

[slideshow]

The Book “The truth about the Savolta Case” by Eduardo Mendoza  is a novel set in the City of Barcelona in the shadow of World War One.

«The Truth about the Savolta Case» (La verdad sobre el caso Savolta), by Eduardo Mendoza was considered in a poll conducted by El País, as the most important book published in Spain since the death of Franco. For a public more and more tired of postmodernist fictions and exhausted by the neverending vogue of experimentalism, the novel represented a breath of fresh air: a successful effort to combine popular fiction with historical novel. With an ambiguous and ironic approach both to history of popular classes in Barcelona as well as an acidic representation of Catalan elites, at the edge of the happy twenties.

The story of the dark French businessman Paul Andre Lepprince, and his efforts to climb up the social scale in the then prosperous city of Barcelona, sharply contrasts with the desperate efforts of factory workers to defend themselves against exploitation and their progressive acquisition of a class consciousness. Out of this social fight, Barcelona became the capital of European anarchism, and the unionist movements developed a new social and political culture that paved the way for the triumph of Spanish Second Republic and, finally, at the beginning of Spanish civil war, of a popular revolution in Barcelona, that is a background of an powerful array of cultural representations, as George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Nevertheless, the ironic narration of the novel, published in 1976 when Spanish Republic legacy was assumed by the new born Spanish democracy, seems a sad reflection on the contingencies of our history.

Reviews

Though first published in the final months of the Franco regime, this quirky, subversive detective novel of terrorism and counterterrorism, now translated into English, strikes the post-Franco attitude — hip, stylish and cynical.  –The New York Times

Set against the labor strikes and Syndicalist uprisings in the years during and following World War I, this whodunit involves the upper echelons of a moribund business complex. Mendoza skillfully unravels his tale like a stylistic mosaic, weaving disjunct dialogs and simulated newspaper articles and court testimony, the full impact of which is not revealed until the last chapter. Despite shallow characterizations, the denouement may catch even attentive readers by surprise as major suspects are bumped off one by one. This keen translation of the 1975 novel complements A City of Miracles ( LJ 11/1/88) in yet another historic fictionalization of Barcelona. -Library Journal

Eduardo Mendoza

Novelist, was born and raised in Barcelona, after receiving his law degree he moved to New York in 1973 and lived and worked there as a translator until 1982. Savolta was his first novel and upon submitting the manuscript to the publisher in 1975, he had to change the novel’s original title, Soldiers of Cataluña, due to a pressure from Francoist censors. Finally released in 1976, the novel was awarded with the ‘Premio de la Crítica’. In 1988, his novel The city of marvels (La ciudad de los prodigios), was named best foreign book in both France and Italy. On December, 2010 he won the ‘Premio Planeta’ with his still untranslated novel, Riña de gatos. His blog

More:  europeanbookclub.org