The storytelling machine of fiction writers does not stop (but on the contrary, judging by the flood of new titles) and continues to spew out novels, stories or miscellaneous and indefinable texts that appear this year that we have just started.
Below are some of the fiction books that will star in 2023, where topics such as motherhood and care, the exploration of one's own privacy or historical environments stand out, according to what the publishers say about them, programmed especially in the first months, when the catalogs look sharper.
Some of these will probably make the best book of the year lists.
And, when we want to catch up with them, the 2024 harvest will begin.
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The essentials of 2022 according to Babelia experts
First of all, a memory for those who have not been here for a long time.
If 2022 had bombastic centenaries (Joyce, Proust, TS Eliot), in 2023 there will also be some, perhaps less important.
100 years have passed since the birth of Italo Calvino, the master of fantastic storytelling, whose works (
The Rampant Baron
,
The Demediated Viscount
,
The Invisible Cities
, etc.) will be vindicated by the Siruela publishing house, for example, through the edition by the centenary of the trilogy
Our Ancestors
.
The poet Carlos Edmundo de Ory would also celebrate his 100th birthday (celebrations are being prepared in his native Cádiz) and the foul-mouthed American Norman Mailer, swordsman of New Journalism, around one of whose works, the essay
The White Negro
, there was controversy in the United States last year, due to suspicions of racism in its title and content.
The poet Carlos Edmundo de Ory, in Madrid in 2004.CLAUDIO ÁLVAREZ
Among the best-selling Spanish authors paying attention to the situation is Fernando Aramburu, who will present
Hijos de la fábula
(Tusquets), a satire on the chimeras of Basque terrorism starring two kids who get into the matter just as ETA is withdrawing.
Elvira Navarro publishes
Las voces de Adriana
(Random House), whose protagonist starts from the experience of mourning, while Ray Loriga returns with
Any summer is an end
(Alfaguara), where he explores those blurry border areas between friendship and love.
Jon Bilbao returns with
Araña
(Impedimenta), a new novel that follows the adventures of John Dunbar, the character of previous texts such as
Basilisk
.
The first novel by the celebrated Basque short story writer Eider Rodríguez,
Construction Material
(Random House), focuses on the relationship between an alcoholic father and his daughter.
Miguel Ángel Hernández, in his new novel,
Anoxia
(Anagrama), investigates what our relationships with those who have already left are like through the story of a photographer who accepts the commission to photograph a deceased.
The writer from Gijón, Begoña Huertas, died prematurely in 2022, at the age of 57. Anagrama is now publishing her posthumous novel
De ella El basement
.
In the same publishing house, Marta Sanz publishes
Metallic shutters go down suddenly.
Vagalume
is the name that the Galicians give to fireflies, and it is the title of the next novel that Julio Llamazares will publish in Alfaguara.
Juan José Millás launches
Solo humo
(also Alfaguara), whose theme is still a mystery.
Ignacio Martínez de Pisón embarks on a well-documented choral work,
Castillos de fuego
(Seix Barral), which portrays post-war Madrid, between 1939 and 1945, when the Second World War was taking place in the rest of the planet.
And Álvaro Pombo returns to Anagrama with the novel
Santander, 1936
, based on the biography of another Álvaro Pombo, the author's homonymous uncle.
On the same label, the new novel by Andrés Barba is titled
El último día de la vida anterior
and the one by Marcos Giralt Torrente
Someday I will be a memory.
The Madrid writer Munir Hachemi, in the Plaza de Arturo Barea, in Lavapiés (Madrid).
KIKE FOR
Among the freshest talents is Leticia Sala, often described as a "promising youngster", who publishes
Los cisnes de Macy's
(Reservoir Books), a collection of stories between the poetic and the pop, featuring sad chats, a meteorite falling in Malibu or a Miami nail artist visiting a witch.
In
Gozo
(Siruela), mixing memory, chronicle and treatise, the hitherto poet and aphorist Azahara Alonso weaves together something like a fragmentary novel on the subject of tourism or the desire for authenticity and efficiency.
Munir Hachemi, from Madrid of Algerian origin, one of those chosen by Granta magazine as the best young storytellers in Spanish, publishes
El árbol viene
(Peripheral), in which he invites us to imagine, through science fiction, the world that future generations will inhabit, where dystopia and utopia are confused.
The badass cartoonist Juarma, after successfully standing out as a writer in 2021, returns to the attack with
Punki.
A love novel
(Blackie Books), set in a loved/hated rural world after the housing bubble burst.
In
Kings vagabonds
(Impedimenta), the Irishman Joseph O'Connor pays an ode to the
rock'n'roll
of the 20th century, its indifferent muses and its made-up messiahs.
Upbringing and care are recurring themes in the current narrative.
Rikva Galchen offers in
Pequeñas
labores (Transit), a miscellany that mixes stories, essays and aphorisms about motherhood.
Also Rachel Cusk, in
A job for life
(Asteroid Books), addresses the issue, which in recent times seems to be of special interest to people of letters, especially women, perhaps as a result of the feminist and demand for care.
The Bulgarian Rumena Bužarovska touches on the theme of motherhood, and also that of marriage, in the provocative
My husband
(Impedimenta), one of her works that is marking her as one of the most interesting European voices in short fiction.
The writer Amélie Nothomb, pictured in Barcelona.Joan Sánchez
Among the great international authors, the publication of the novel
Lessons
(in its English title) by Ian McEwan by Anagrama stands out, which tells the life of a character through the great events of the s.
XX: from the Sinai war to the pandemic, going through the Cuban missile crisis or the fall of the Berlin Wall: How do great historical events affect people?
The American of Croatian-Persian descent Ottessa Mossfegh has become a revelation in recent years with her disturbing stories and now she returns with
Lapvona
(Alfaguara), set in a medieval village where the author deploys her "naive sadism". .
The Belgian Amélie Nothomb tells the story of her father before her birth in
First Blood
(Anagram).
The new work by Alejandro Zambra is also expected at Anagrama, whose
Chilean Poet
was highlighted as one of the best of the year by the international press, for example, the
New Yorker
magazine .
Sarah Manguso was also singled out by the
New Yorker
as one of the authors of 2022 and now she is coming to Spain with her
Very Cold People
(Alpha Decay), a novelistic debut that presents a crude portrait of the American rural world.
Featured, but this time by
The New York Times
, was the United States-based Argentine Hernán Díaz who publishes
Trust
(title in English) in Anagram.
And Igiaba Scego, whose family arrived in exile in Italy after the Somali coup in 1974, returns to the time of colonialism, through the memory of her mother, in
My home is where I am
(Nordic).
After the recent attack suffered at the hands of an Islamist fanatic, Salman Rushdie returns this season with
Ciudad Victoria
(Random House), a novel set in 14th century India.
In
The Wide World
(Salamander), Pierre Lemaitre also delves into history and narrates the adventures and misadventures of the Pelletier family, owner of a soap factory in Beirut with the Indochina War and post-war Paris in the background.
A dash of exoticism and several murders.
Juan Cárdenas, in
Peregrino transparente
(Periférica), goes back to a scientific expedition that traveled through Colombia in 1850: an English painter traveled on it who would find himself involved in a philosophical adventure in search of a local artist.
Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk offers in
The books of Jacob
(Anagram) the story of a young Jew who crosses the Europe of the s.
XVIII subverting the established order with his mysterious sect.
The historical in literature: if Benito Pérez Galdós told the history of the Spanish 19th century in the form of short novels that made up his
National Episodes
, the Lengua de Trapo publishing house has embarked on applying this task to our own time: authors such as Elisabeth Duval, Sabina Urraca or Vicente Monroy.
This year there are two fictions about the recent history of Spain, written by Jacobo Rivero and Guillermo Zapata.
The writer Rachel Cusk, at her home in Paris.Ed Alcock
Another curious editorial project is that of Caballo de Troya, the label launched in 2003 by Constantino Bértolo, dedicated to the search for new literary talents, which in recent years has been directed by a guest editor each season.
Alberto Olmos, Luna Miguel and Antonio J. Rodríguez, Mercedes Cebrián or Lara Moreno have passed through there.
It is the turn of Sabina Urraca, who achieved great success editing the novel
Panza de burro
(Barret) by Andrea Abreu.
Among the new voices that she will propose to us are names like Leticia G. Domínguez, Aida González Rossi or Luis Díaz.
The loyal tribe of crime and crime novel readers will be able to enjoy new works by authors such as Alan Parks, Harlan Coben, Ragnar Jónasson or Ibon Martín.
And within what we call
best seller
novel , new works by Juan Gómez Jurado, Elisabet Benavent or Santiago Posteguillo will also be published.
Many remain in the inkwell.
Next year, many more will stay.
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