The 30 recommendations of 'Babelia' for World Book Day 2023

Book Day commemorates the death of Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Garcilaso de la Vega, as well as coinciding with the Sant Jordi festival in Catalonia, with its traditional exchange of roses and books.

For those who are short of gift ideas (or self-gift), here is a selection of the titles that have graced the cover of

so far this year, have been highlighted as books of the week in the cultural supplement of EL PAÍS or especially celebrated by our team of critics.

Spanish novel

LimpiaAlia Trabucco ZeránLumen, 2023. 232 pages.

€18.90

This novel narrates the life of a housekeeper and the seven years she spends working for a high-class family in Santiago de Chile.

A forty-something couple swamped with work, certainly unhappy, whose little daughter will die, as announced in the first lines of the book.

Deliciously distressing, addictive, the novel portrays everyday worlds that can become a storm for the weak.

Interview with Alia Trabucco Zerán, by Rocío Montes.

Any summer is an endRay LorigaAlfaguara, 2023. 248 pages.

€19.90

The protagonist of this novel also underwent surgery for a tumor: the same as the author, who thought a lot about whether he should write about his experience until he said: what the hell.

“It would have been such a foolish thing not to.

It would have been like living through a plane crash and not telling it.

When something so relevant happens to you, you have to write about it.

I doubted though."

Interview with Ray Loriga, by Carmen Pérez-Lanzac.

Children of the fableFernando AramburuTusquets, 2023. 320 pages, 20.90 euros

The burlesque and even grotesque treatment of the two protagonists, Joseba and Ander, in their twenties who joined ETA shortly before the organization declared the definitive ceasefire (in October 2011), does not lessen the seriousness with which the doctrinal intoxication of many young idealists.

Review of Domingo Ródenas de Moya.

I just wanted to danceGreta GarcíaTránsito, 2023. 200 pages, 18 euros

A novel sustained by the power of the protagonist: her Andalusian orality, her crazy humor and her impertinence, her disenchanted amorality and her sudden anger.

And also for García's talent for brief and somewhat orgiastic scenes or the wonderful dialogues between prisoners, virtues that refer to a dramaturgical dimension.

And by an intelligent rhythm, as euphoric as it is patient.

Criticism of Carlos Pardo.

The time of the fliesClaudia PiñeiroAlfaguara, 2022. 408 pages.

€18.91

In this novel there are bodies fighting for their territory, people looking for a place in a context of structural violence against the most disadvantaged, but, above all, it is the story of a friendship.

“Today the reader can read a friendship story between two women and it can be a man, a woman, whatever.

For a long time it was not like that.

I think Elena Ferrante broke with that.

A man can be moved by this story.

They are alone in the world, it is sad and at the same time hopeful”, explains Piñeiro.

Article by Juan Carlos Galindo.

Santander, 1936 Álvaro Pombo Anagrama, 2023. 329 pages.

€19.90

This novel can be read as a compendium in which all the fundamental features of a clairvoyant literature crystallize, like that of the author.

An atmosphere that goes from the active ear of the street to metaphysical roundness.

With an exquisite sensitivity to describe the things of walking around the house and then moving from there to the inspiration that his crystalline focus on the everyday connects with high philosophy.

That's Pombo.

Someone who drinks without prejudice from Kierkegaard and Thomas Mann, but also from Concha Espina and Galdós.

Interview with Álvaro Pombo, by Jesús Ruiz Mantilla.

In the mouth of the loboElvira LindoSeix Barral, 2023. 272 ​​pages.

€19.90

Cover of 'In the Wolf's Den', by Elvira Lindo

The plot is the struggle of a girl, Juliet, to understand and free herself from the monsters that stalk her and that are even darker when your own mother is not your protector.

“Many of the things that the pre-adolescent girl in this novel feels are based on conversations with these two friends of mine who had a very similar type of mother, with a very strong irresponsibility.

There is a very strong helplessness, with dramatic consequences when a mother has not been aware of what she was going through ”.

Interview with Elvira Lindo, by Berna González Harbour.

GozoAzahara AlonsoSiruela, 2023. 226 pages.

€15.95

It is a very free essay and a novel led by ideas, a dialogue with the spaces where life takes place and with a wide collection of readings: from Georges Perec to Roland Barthes, Carmen Martín Gaite, Susan Sontag, Donna Stonecipher... And a book , also be said, written in a kind of state of accuracy.

An anecdote serves as a starting point: the author and her partner decide to spend a sabbatical year on an island in Malta, Gozo.

Criticism of Carlos Pardo.

Descampados Manuel Calderón Tusquets, 2023. 288 pages.

19 euros

The author has configured a mythical territory: the Spain of the wasteland.

That untamed and moral territory of the periphery.

A non-place for nothing, riddled with memory, ruins, working class and hollow Sunday afternoons.

A lost paradise of childhood freedom where poppies, wheat ears and serial daisies, bricks and rubble, old mattresses, ripped-out armchairs, half-sunken recliners, a few syringes and many condoms flourished.

Criticism of Paco Cerdà.

translated novel

Love the sea Pascal Quignard Translation by Ignacio Vidal-Folch.

Gutenberg Galaxy, 2023. 272 ​​pages.

€21.50

It is a story of an overflowing love between two imaginary musicians, a certain Hatten and the Nordic Thullyn.

It is a story that, for Quignard, refers to its origins.

His mother was depressed and who took care of him during his first months was a young German named Cecilia Müller.

It was postwar.

Le Havre, where he grew up, was in ruins.

The Germans were frowned upon and Cecilia Müller could not renew her residence permit in France and she had to leave.

Little Pascal was one and a half years old.

For him it was a blow.

Meeting with Pascal Quignard, by Marc Bassets.

Fortuna Hernán Díaz Translation by Javier Calvo.

Anagram, 2023. 436 pages.

21.90 euro.

The author cultivates a realism that allows him to carry out an effective analysis of American society 100 years ago, carrying out an in-depth examination of what happened during one of the most turbulent and problematic moments in the historical vicissitudes of capitalism, the crisis of the years before the Great Depression of 1929. "I was surprised to find that in the United States, a country where money has an almost mystical dimension, there are really no novels about money," he explains.

Interview with Hernán Díaz, by Eduardo Lago.

LapvonaOttessa MoshfeghTranslation of Immaculate Conception Pérez Parra.

Alfaguara, 2023. 320 pages.

€18.91

This novel was published in the United States last summer.

It was received with divided opinions.

Many critics are still dazzled by an imaginative universe expressed in a neat and orderly way.

Those with a more sensitive stomach, on the other hand, did not spend a good time between its pages.

Established worldwide with 'My year of rest and relaxation', the American author explores the limits of political correctness in this work.

Interview with Ottessa Moshfegh, by Luis Pablo Beauregard.

Ciudad VictoriaSalman RushdieTranslation by Luis Murillo Fort.

Random House, 2023. 416 pages.

€21.75

The novel recounts the misty origin, rise and fall of a fantasy universe whose original desire for happy coexistence —born from the efforts of its founder, Pampa Kampana, a woman into whom a goddess has breathed her magic— is deteriorating until it is fulfilled. his unfortunate fate.

In accordance with the well-known Cervantine fondness for him, the Anglo-Indian author traces the narrative using the topic of the manuscript found.

Criticism by Javier Aparicio Maydeu.

The treesPercival EverettTranslation by Javier Calvo.

From Conatus, 2023. 320 pages.

22.90 euros

The African-American author, illustrious university professor, satirical writer and ferocious 'outsider' —his novels are darts against what racism and lack of culture have done to the minds of Americans and, by extension, of all—, is embedded in the tight disguise of the crime novel and makes it explode from within.

An instant classic is marked here.

He resurrects the dead to take revenge on the present, or put in his place —the cemetery— a 'white trash' proud of his ancestral stupidity and hatred.

Criticism by Laura Fernández.

The empty closetsMaria Judite de CarvalhoTranslation by Regina López Muñoz.

Errata Natuae, 2023. 168 pages.

18 euros

More than a portrayer of characters, the Portuguese writer wrote as if she were a neurosurgeon who delves into the most hidden place of traumas and desires.

The protagonists of it are almost always women who feel old in their thirties and who help the men who are going to abandon them to take the plunge without scenes or explanations.

They live imprisoned in the pacata morality of the long Portuguese dictatorship... Criticism by Tereixa Constenla.

A ghost in the throatDoireann Ní GhríofaTranslation by Patricia Gonzalo de Jesús.

Sixth Floor, 2023. 276 pages.

€21.90

'Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire', considered one of the great texts of Ireland and Great Britain, passed from oral to written tradition in the 19th century.

It was another woman, Norrie Singleton, also known as Nóra Ní Shíndile, who was in charge of transcribing the voices, which until then had flown like birds from mouth to mouth.

Today, once again, it is a woman, the poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa, who returns to the powerful love lament, although to stop on this occasion in the figure of its author, Eibhlín Dubh, as unknown as her work is famous.

Criticism by Nuria Barrios.

The employeesOlga RavnTranslation by Victoria Alonso.

Anagram, 2023. 144 pages.

€17.90

This novel is a cryptic reflection of a world, the contemporary, in which the limits between what we are and what we do have disappeared.

And what has caused that?

That alienation has expanded its battlefield.

In the Age of Omniproductivity, humans will live alienated or they will not live, seems to say the author's microcosm, which is not coincidentally populated by humans who don't even know if they are human, are their memories theirs?

Criticism by Laura Fernández.

Las tempestálidas Gueorgui Gospodínov Translation by María Vútova and César Sánchez.

Fulgencio Pimentel, 2022. 408 pages.

25 euros

Cover of 'The Storms', by Gueorgui Gospodinov

This work narrates the friendship between the narrator and Gaustín, a Bulgarian psychiatrist like him who sets up clinics in Zurich to produce a past that, as a "refuge", alleviates the effects of Alzheimer's.

From there it is the countries that, in their condition of patients of history, want to return to the past, there is only a small step for an intelligence like Gospodinov's, and Europe once again splits not only into territories, but also into times.

Criticism by Patricio Pron.

Essay, history and biographies

About the sublimeLonginusTranslation by Haris Papoulias.

Alliance, 2022. 432 pages, 15.95 euros

The most recent study on the concept of the sublime, by the philosopher Haris Papoulias, in his recent edition and commentary on Longino's treatise that lays the foundations for this discussion, confirms how our neo-romantic postmodernity has continued the curious drift of the sublime since idealism, substituting the landscape and architectural contemplation of the 'grand tour' for cruise tourism and the emotion of horror and danger, evoked by Burke, by the television broadcast of the bombings of the wars in Iraq and Ukraine.

Article by David Hernández de la Fuente.

Ocean planet Javier PeláezCrítica, 2022. 504 pages 23.90 euros

The story has generally been told from the ground.

Several recent books now agree to focus on the sea, from its relationship with geopolitics to its role in the face of climate change.

Article by Juan Arnau.

Writings on art, literature and music (1845-1866)Charles BaudelaireSelection, translation and notes by José Ramón Monreal.

Foreword by Giovanni Macchia.

Cliff, 2022. 1,040 pages.

49 euro

The lucidity and sharpness of the judgments of the author of 'The Flowers of Evil' are not bubbles of wit, but respond to a congruent and locked aesthetic. They are a pinnacle of artistic criticism of their century.

Criticism by Ángel L. Prieto de Paula.

Cinema MeditationsQuentin TarantinoTranslation by Carlos Milla.

Reservoir Books, 2023. 418 pages.

21.90 euro.

The director of 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood' analyzes the films that marked him in his adolescence and in his career.

And he does not hesitate to distribute criticism and attack or extol his teammates.

Criticism by Gregorio Belinchón.

The creation of the selfAnil SethTranslation by Albino Santos Mosquera.

Sixth Floor, 2023. 398 pages, 23.90 euros

Consciousness, that which we lose when we fall asleep and recover when we wake up, is a mental phenomenon.

And like all mental phenomena, it must consist of the activity of certain neural circuits.

But how does it work?

The neuroscientist tries to explain it rigorously and clearly in his latest book.

Review by Javier Sampedro.

red comet.

Incandescent Art and Fleeting Life by Sylvia PlathHeather ClarkTranslated by Julia Viejo and Gudrun Palomino.

Bamba, 2023. 1,048 pages.

€25.55

The author examines the poet's literary legacy to distance her from the myth and return her to the place she should never have left: that of one of the most important poets of the 20th century.

Tribune of Lucía Lijtmaer.

Antonio Gramsci, a biographyAndrew PearmainTranslated by Teresa Arijón.

Twenty-first Century Publishers, 2022. 328 pages.

25 euros

In the interval between the death of the old and the birth of the new, "monsters appear," said the philosopher and founder of the Italian Communist Party.

A biography and the publication of the notebooks that he wrote in Mussolini's prisons bring his thoughts to the fore.

Article by Joaquín Estefania.

The patriot king.

Alfonso XIII and the nation Javier Moreno LuzónGalaxia Gutenberg, 2023. 592 pages.

25 euros

Campechano, womanizer and accused of corruption, he was destined to be the modernizer of Spain and ended up becoming a conservative symbol.

He died in exile.

The historian Javier Moreno Luzón addresses the career of Felipe VI's great-grandfather in light of his national project.

This year also marks a century since the coup d'état by Miguel Primo de Rivera, supported by the Crown.

Article by José Andrés Rojo.

Poetry

Cross.

German poetry of the 21st century Various authors Translation by Teresa Ruiz Rosas and Cecilia Dreymüller.

Tresmolins, 2022. 448 pages.

29 euros

The first anthology of German poetry in Spain in the last 40 years, without being panoramic, abounds in congratulations and clues to continue reading.

Criticism by Martín López-Vega.

corporeal

Poetry 2010-2022Marta SanzLa Bella Varsovia, 2022. 410 pages.

€19.90

Sanz is not in the canonical anthologies.

He is so unique, against the current and alive, intuitive and unpredictable, that he escapes all categorization.

He sucks in the reader, puts him in front of the mirror, even before the most secret intimate experiences, with an intelligent verb and an overflowing self-confidence, with accurate metaphors and necessary prosaism.

Criticism of Manuel Rico.

Comic

María la Jabalina Miguel Ángel Giner and Cristina Durán Astiberri, 2023. 176 pages.

25 euros

After illustrating the tragedy of the metro accident in Valencia, which earned them the National Award, the authors recount in their new graphic novel the life of the militiawoman accused of crimes she could not commit.

Article by Ferran Bono.

The young woman and the seaCatherine MeurisseImpedimenta, 2022. 120 pages.

€22.95

Cover of the book 'The young woman and the sea', by Catherine MeurisseMEURISSE

In this comic, the author narrates both her impressions of Japan and the history of this country in relation to artistic representation, and the result has overtones of a micro-chronicle of travel with the aspect of a fable with a surprising and appropriately real ending.

Article by Laura Fernandez.

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