The colossal novel by Sara Barquinero, a Nadal Award between the 'thriller' and the 'western', the dark side of Bill Gates and other books of the week

“Two things happen,” says essayist and literary critic Nadal Suau in his review of

, by Sara Barquinero: “the first, that I believe in the book to the point of applauding.

The second, whether or not it convinces each one (the consensus, what a suspicious destiny for a work), its solidity is impossible to ignore.”

This is how forceful the expert is with the new work of the writer from Zaragoza, a billet of 800 pages where the least thing is its thickness and the most important thing is its literary quality.

A novel of novels destined for “inevitable success.”

Another notable book is

, the recent Nadal Prize winner written by César Pérez Gellida.

It is a crime novel, and therefore what better way to analyze it than our expert in the genre, Juan Carlos Galindo, who finds in this narrative large doses of

with a historical setting and

, with an ending of well-told action and violence, western style.

And with a character that grows throughout its pages, love.

“A novel ending in the best sense of the word,” Galindo concludes.

For its part,

by Hans von Trotha, tells the story of Ludwig Pollak, a renowned antiquarian and art advisor, best known for being the person who found, and gave to the Vatican Museums, the lost arm of the famous sculptural group of the

.

A good narrative with an already known ending: Pollak was murdered in Auschwitz, like so many thousands of Roman Jews.

Other books reviewed this week are

, by Tim Schwab, which attacks the American magnate and philanthropist, raising doubts about the good intentions of his charitable acts, aimed, according to the author, at obtaining even more power;

, by Eugenio Fuentes, an essay on the crime novel that, according to the writer Leonardo Padura, author of our review, has been erasing the limits that separated it from other genres in a permanent transfer of themes and stylemes;

, by Barthélemy Amengual, which analyzes the life and work of the director of emblematic works such as

(1971) or

(1973);

and

, the interesting analysis of Francoism carried out from Grenoble by Nicolás Sesma, whose most important thesis is that this dark period in the recent history of Spain was only possible because it did not depend on a single man and was more well a regime, like all dictatorships, not of voters but of selectors;

“people whom you select to be part of the power, to whom you have to offer a sufficient part of the pie and to whom you have to control so that they do not threaten you.”

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