The dystopian satire of Marta Sanz, the initiation journey to the East by Anne Applebaum and other books of the week

One year and one month after Russia's cruel invasion of eastern Ukraine began, two books help to understand the keys to a conflict that had been entrenched in Europe for decades, perhaps centuries.

The first of those reviewed this week in 'Babelia' is

, by Anne Applebaum, in which the expert historian and political journalist already warned in 1994, when it was first published, of the geopolitical instability of the area, in which the constant mutation of borders had placed peoples, governments, languages ​​and nationalist sentiments in a strange puzzle that is difficult to fit.

Applebaum's initiation journey, perhaps a premonitory of the current conflict, to numerous countries in the troubled area has been updated with a prologue by the author in light of the current war.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrujovich publishes a

, in which he visits 39 cities in the world that have been the scene of great historical events.

And he analyzes life in them with a look split between the European and the Slavic.

This week's featured book is

, by Manuel Calderón, which becomes an x-ray of the rural exodus of the seventies to the big cities, seen from an archetypal space of childhood memory, the descampados of urban suburbs.

In addition, among the titles published, the latest novel by Marta Sanz also stands out,

, an intelligent narrative, full of literary, cinematographic and musical references, which is an acid and bitter criticism, with extremely black humour, adrift in technology. and social that humanity now bears.

The vehicle that Marta Sanz uses is a dystopia anchored in virtual reality and artificial intelligence that we are now just beginning to glimpse.

's critics

are reviewing this week the collections of poems

, by Ben Clark;

and

, by Álvaro Valverde;

the essays

, by Lluís Orriols;

, by Robert Kaplan;

and

, by Gal Beckerman;

and the novel

, written by Joseph O'Connor, brother of the famous Sinéad O'Connor, and which delves, with great veracity, into the world of rock bands.

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