With just a few weeks left until the celebration of Book Day, publishers accelerate the pace of publications to reach April 23 with all the news on the streets.

The month will begin with two novels of a classic and a modern of the current Spanish novel: the fables of Fernando Aramburu and Miqui Otero return. But powerful names from the best Latin American literature will also reach our country's bookstores: the biographical novel about Elena Garro written by Jazmina Barrera and the autobiographical memoir about her paternal library by Aura García-Junco.

Books about gastronomy that connect with the good life remind us of our human nature - this is the proposal of Maria Nicolau and Albert Molins - but at the same time the best essay forces us to think about how humanity is transformed when the digital revolution and Artificial intelligence changes the paradigm of civilization as we had known it—this is what the informative philosophical treatises by Michel Onfray and José María Lassalle discuss.

The commemoration of the second centenary of Byron's death comes with the translation of a great biography and a new version of

Don Juan

in Andreu Jaume's version, but perhaps the biographical novel that Edna O'Brien dedicated to him is the best way to access to the secret of a man who embodied romanticism. Byron is a trail of emotion and sensitivity that has traveled through Western tradition, like the perfume that defines a civilization: following the trail of Chanel No. 5 is also a journey through the history of Europe, as Karl Schlögel proposes in the book he is now publishing. Cliff.

These and other titles—crime novels, great journalism, poetry, and comics—are some of the most notable of the month of Book Day.

Dear friend, from my life I write to your life

Yiyun Li

Translation by Virginia Higa. Chai Editora, 2024. 176 pages. 19 euros

Yiyun Li (1972) published her first collection of stories,

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,

in 2005 (published in Lumen in 2010 under the title

Good Wishes

), a volume with which the Chinese-American writer won important literary awards. Previously, they had been published in

The New Yorker

or

The Paris Review

. And two of those stories even gave rise to films directed by Wayne Wang:

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

(2007)

and

The Nebraska Princess

(2008).

Since then, he has published regularly, with titles such as

The Gates of Paradise

(2010), the book of short stories

Golden Boy, Esmeralda Girl

(2010) and the novel

Más Generous Que La Solitude

(2016). His new book is his most intimate title: a memoir in which he recounts the first years of his life, in which he even suffered abuse from his mother. A reading that leads to understanding how she became a writer.

On sale April 1.

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Byron in Love

Edna O'Brien

Translation by Amado Diéguez. Cabaret Voltaire, 2024. 320 pages. 21.95 euros

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) left unpublished memoirs that lovers of his poetry were never able to read. They ended up in ashes in the fireplace of his editor by the decision of a group of friends scandalized by the poet's moral and sexual portrait of himself. On the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron's death, the Irish writer Edna O'Bryan delves into the Englishman's life with her brilliant pen - the same one with which she has delivered publishing successes such as

Country Girls or Happily Married Girls -,

as he already did with his biographical novels about Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. Byron “loved women and men, he needed the other, whoever it was. “He saw a beautiful face and prepared to build and raze another Troy,” writes Ella O'Bryan.

On sale April 3.

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The boy

Fernando Aramburu

Tusquets, 2024. 272 ​​pages. 20.50 euros

The last novel published by Fernando Aramburu (1959) was

Hijos de la fábula

, a satirical, almost picaresque narrative that humorously portrayed the sordid world in which ETA terrorists moved. Its protagonists, the twenty-somethings Joseba and Ander, joined the band shortly before, in 2011, it decided to leave the souls, although they are prepared to continue in the fight, which gives rise to the sordid adventures of two

rather dull

gudaris

. The author of

Patria

now decides to change his register - his versatility is reflected in his last published book,

Sinfonía corporal

, which brings together all his poetry - with his new novel,

El Niño

, in which he remembers, through the figure of a grandfather , the tragic death of a child in a gas explosion in a school - the accident is real, it occurred in 1980 and ended the lives of 48 minors in the Marcelino Ugalde school group, in Ortuella (Vizcaya) -. A heartbreaking story with a strong emotional impact.

On sale April 3.

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diverse Spain

Eduardo Manzano

Criticism, 2024. 548 pages. 24.90 euros

What if the story of Spain was not the one we have been told? Doctor in Medieval History from the Complutense University and research professor at the CSIC, Eduardo Manzano has already published valuable books that document various periods of peninsular history. The most recent is

The Caliph's Court. Four years in the Córdoba of the Umayyads

(2019), but we must not forget

Conquerors, emirs and caliphs either. The Umayyads and the formation of al-Andalus

(2011). Now Manzano displays the mosaic of identities, cultures, languages ​​and civilizations that have made up this territory we call Spain and that many have always tried to reduce to a nation of a single creed, monolingual and made up only of old Iberians. Because the truth story was different.

On sale April 3.

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Perspectives

Laurent Binet

Translation by Adolfo García Ortega. Seix Barral, 2024. 336 pages. 21 euros

The imagination of Laurent Binet (1972) is overflowing. With his third novel,

Civilizations

, he imagined what would have happened if instead of the Europeans conquering America it had been Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, who colonized the old continent. The new Binet, fast-paced, does not lower the bar. In

Perspectives

, a crime in 16th century Florence, the domain of the Duke of Florence, Cosimo de' Medici, sparks an investigation immersed in a turbulent time of rivalries between powers, family fights and even disputes with the Vatican. The dead man is a painter, Pontormo, murdered along with an obscene sketch of Maria de' Medici, one of the duke's daughters.

On sale April 3.

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artificial civilization

José María Lassalle

Arpa, 2024. 192 pages. 19.90 euros

For a few years now, Professor José María Lassalle has been thinking philosophically about the reality that is mutating due to the impact of the digital revolution.

Artificial Civilization

is another piece of a philosophical trilogy that he has published in the Arpa publishing house. After

Cyberleviathan

and

Wounded Liberalism

, he now imagines the new world in which humans will coexist with machines equipped with intelligence. Is Europe ready to adapt to the new world that China and the United States are designing, with different intentions, but with the same desire for power? The continental alternative that he proposes is that of digital humanism.

On sale April 3.

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The scent of empires

Karl Schlögel

Translation by Francisco Uzcanga Meinecke. Cliff, 2024. 232 pages. 20 euros

Capitalism and communism smell the same. Not exactly, but if we stick to the story that Karl Schlögel tells, almost yes. Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel, two French perfumers, were commissioned to create a new scent to commemorate the third centenary of the Romanov dynasty. But we already know the story, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Nicholas II and his entire family were executed in Yekaterinburg by Bolshevik troops. With the arrival of the Revolution in Russia, Beaux returned to France, where he would meet Coco Chanel, and Michel remained in Russia. Two of the most famous perfumes in history would be born from the formula of that imperial fragrance: Chanel No. 5 and Moscow Red. A book for history lovers with a good sense of smell.

On sale April 3.

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Burn! Memoirs of a cook

Maria Nicolau

Peninsula, 2024. 272 ​​pages. 23.90 euros

Maria Nicolau, gastronomic expert who already published the critical and sales success in 2022

Cuisine or barbarism

, he began making dishes at the age of 17 when he started working in a hotel to pay for his studies in Sociology and Politics, and he continues between pots and pans. After spending 20 years in inns, hotels and restaurants of all kinds in France and Spain, Nicolau (1982) decided to open a restaurant with affordable menus in Vilanova de Sau (Barcelona), a town with less than 300 inhabitants. His new book is a mix between memoirs and recipes, seasoned with anecdotes and a pinch of history of avant-garde Spanish cuisine.

On sale April 3.

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Hangar 885

Arnaldur Indridason

Translation by Fabio Teixidó. RBA, 2024. 336 pages. 20 euros

Paradoxes of the imagination, Arnaldur Indridason is “the king of the crime novel in a country without crimes”, as our expert Juan Carlos Galindo defined him in 2013 when he interviewed him in Reykjavík. Author of books that total more than seven million copies sold, with award-winning titles such as

Passage of Shadows, The Woman in Green

or

The Marshes,

the Icelandic writer is now publishing

Hangar 885

, another installment by detective Erlendur Sveinsson, in which he investigates two very different cases, the death of a man found in a lake who was apparently thrown from a plane and the disappearance of a young woman two decades ago.

On sale April 3.

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Decline and fascination

Eva Baltasar

Random House, 2024. 128 pages. 17.95 euros

Having completed the trilogy

Three Wild Bodies

, made up of

Permafrost

(2018),

Boulder

(2020) and

Mamut

(2022) and which focuses on motherhood through the story of three very different women, Eva Baltasar (1978)

addresses

a

story of precariousness in times when a university degree does not prevent you from being on the street. The protagonist makes the decision to dedicate herself to cleaning houses, although perhaps not the way of cleaning that their owners understand. For her, breaking the rules becomes a way of surviving, yes, quite amoral, but not so illogical.

On sale April 4.

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The queen of spades

Jazmina Barrera

Lumen, 2024. 272 ​​pages. 17.95 euros

Elena Garro (1916-1998) was a Mexican novelist, playwright, screenwriter and journalist who built an enormous career barely affected by the enormous shadow cast by her husband, the Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. A figure, therefore, that of Garro, since that of Paz has never lacked narrators, who deserved a book like the one written by Jazmina Barrera (1988), author of titles such as

Línia nigra

(2020) or

Punto de cruz

(2021). In it, the Mexican writer structures a faithful portrait based on all types of documents, writings, letters and interviews of the author of

The Memories of the Future

.

On sale April 4.

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Orchestra

Miqui Otero

Alfaguara, 2024. 288 pages. 19.85 euros

A night of partying in a town, Valdeplata, in the middle of the summer festival. Characters of all ages, loves lost and found again, secrets, memories... With these premises, Miqui Otero (1980) has created his latest novel, in which music serves to connect all the stories. The author of

Simón

(2020), a moving novel in which he recounted the learning of a young man who gets used to living with broken dreams and, therefore, taught to lose with elegance, now lets himself be rocked by the night breeze at rhythm of a summer orchestra.

On sale April 4.

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God strike down whoever writes about me

Aura García-Junco

Sixth Floor, 2024. 216 pages

In

The day I learned that I don't know how to love

(Seix Barral, 2021), Aura García-Junco questioned the exclusivity in sexual relationships. The Mexican writer, identified by

Granta

magazine as one of the most influential literary voices in Spanish, was never good at monogamy: “First I was an innocent unfaithful person, in the way that children torture their pets because they don't know what to do. “They have developed the empathy necessary to see what makes them suffer.” But then she no longer wanted to be a “bad person” and she freely and argued the concept of her open relationship. After that book-confession, the author now delivers a curious story, between essay and fiction, which she starts with an inherited library.

On sale April 8.

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The trees do not flee

Verena Stössinger

Translation by Jorge Seca. Periférica, 2024. 248 pages. 19.50 euros

German citizens who traditionally lived in the territories of the former East Prussia were used as one of the excuses—the supposed protection of those minorities—by Hitler's Nazi regime to begin its expansionist delusions of World War II. And, in the end, those same citizens became the collateral victims of the end of the conflict, when the victors decided to expel them and move to Germany. The theory was to “avoid future conflicts,” but in practice it meant a deportation that led to starvation, exhaustion, extreme cold, and vandalism that stripped them of their very few belongings. All this is told by Verena Stössinger in a novel that narrates the return to his territories of origin of one of those deportees, who, in the search for his roots, at least hoped to find the same landscapes, since "the trees do not flee." .

On sale April 8.

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An immense blue

Patrick Svensson

Translation by Carolina Moreno Tena. Asteroid Books, 2024. 272 ​​pages. 19.95 euros

The Swede Patrik Svensson (1972) already published the novel

The Gospel of the Eels

in Libros del Asteroid in 2020 , an interesting story about a mysterious fish (

Anguilla anguilla

) that is born and dies in the Sargasso Sea, although no one has been able to see it. never. In the book, Svensson displayed his admiration for the secrets of a species present in many cuisines and advocated limiting its capture because it runs the risk of disappearing. After that volume, the Nordic writer now turns his gaze to the oceans and their wonders, in a work that uses extraordinary characters, women and men, who dedicated their lives to the sea.

On sale April 8.

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Of our wounded brothers

Joseph Andras

Translation by Álex Gibert. Anagrama, 2024. 136 pages. 17.90 euros

The Frenchman Joseph Andras (1984) dedicated “to the mutineers, the deserters, the saboteurs and the pacifists” the second part of his previous book published by Anagrama (in 2022). Under the title

Afar from the southern sky & This is how we wage war on them

,

he intended to bring closer the life of the independence and communist leader Ho Chi Minh at the end of the second decade of the 20th century, in the first part of it. In the second, he raised a plea against animal abuse, against a universal, perpetual model with an unlimited license that treats animals as merchandise at the service of man. In his new book, the protagonist is another of those characters who fight against the machinery that rules the world and find themselves crushed by it: Fernand Iveton (1926-1957), a young communist worker who became the only

pied noir

(French white man born in Algeria) who was executed—guillotined at age 31, to be precise—by the French Government during the decolonization war in the North African country.

On sale April 10.

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Eating without asking permission

Albert Molins

Rosamerón, 2024. 272 ​​pages. 21.90 euros

“Watch him! "He is the gourmet of the 21st century going through the jungle of culinary dilemmas with a machete in his right hand and a knife between his teeth," says Maria Nicolau, author of another of the tasty books recommended for this month of April, by culinary specialist Albert Molins. . Born in 1969, this journalist was the author between 2004 and 2009 of the reference blog

Homo gastronomicus.

He has now written a treatise, an essay, on the cultural importance of the act of eating, which affects life, death, sex, celebration, management of the environment and the relationship with our children.

On sale April 10.

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I almost don't remember anymore

Clara Morales

Transit, 2024. 204 pages. 18 euros

With the evocation of an immense loquat tree next to the school, in the town, Clara Morales begins to unfold her beautiful prose in the first of the 13 stories that make up

Ya Almost No Me Remember

, a narrative in which memory, transported to the present Through the senses, it links details that drag others to effectively combat oblivion. Morales' stories address all kinds of topics, from the story of a concentration camp survivor or a perverse childhood game, to the first LGTBIQ+ march. To follow.

On sale April 10.

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Anima. The life and death of the soul

Michael Onfray

Translation by Núria Petit Fontserè. Paidós, 2024. 440 pages. 29 euros

One of the traits with which this star of philosophy in France is defined is atheism. It never ceases to surprise that this “iconclastic Nietzschean” Onfray dedicates a book to something in which he does not believe: the soul. But what it is about is, precisely, to demonstrate its non-existence. The story begins with the analysis of how this notion was born, goes through its consolidation and crisis, and culminates with its current rehabilitation: the digital soul whose prophet seems to be Elon Musk. “From the immaterial soul to the digital soul, everything converges towards the possibility of an inaugural posthuman of the inhuman. This future is already our present.”

On sale April 10.

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What I like the most are monsters 2

Emil Ferris

Translation by Montserrat Meneses Vilar. Reservoir Books, 2024. 420 pages. 37.90 euros

The American cartoonist Emil Ferris (1962) stood out in 2017 with one of the best comics so far in the 21st century,

What I like most are monsters,

in which she expressed her obsession with movie monsters from a very young age and series B magazines. A resounding work that overflows with its pens and markers, with some touches of wonderful colors, the pattern of lines of a children's writing notebook in which the story develops. Ferris' comic earned praise from established artists such as Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel, and now, finally, comes the second part of this emblematic work.

On sale April 11.

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Life and death of the Medellín cartel

Carlos Lehder

Debate, 2024. 408 pages. 21.75 euros

A big-time criminal telling the story of the operation of one of the most dangerous mafia structures in the world. Colombian Carlos Lehder (Armenia, 1949), member of the Medellín cartel, was captured on February 4, 1987, extradited to the United States and sentenced to life imprisonment. But after becoming a protected witness in the case against drug trafficker Manuel Antonio Noriega, his sentence was reduced and, after spending 33 years in prison, he was free. From his exile in Germany he now tells his version of the activities, criminal or not, of his clandestine years, from when he sold stolen cars in New York when he was still a minor until the end of his escapades.

On sale April 11.

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Alternating currents. Anthology of verse and prose

Octavio Paz

Royal Spanish Academy, 2024. 960 pages. 17 euros

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) is not lavish in publications. In addition to their dictionaries, manuals and grammars, only selected authors sign their commemorative editions. These are emblematic publications of literature in Spanish. This April, on the 110th anniversary of the birth of Octavio Paz (1914-1998), the institution that seeks to clean, fix and give splendor to the Spanish language in all its geographical varieties publishes the definitive anthology of the giant of letters. It is a “chronological journey through Paz's work that interweaves prose with poetry, letters with essays and other writings, until forming a vital and literary biography of the Mexican through his texts.”

On sale April 11.

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Argayu / Landslide

Berta Piñán

Bartleby, 2024.

Argayu

is the word in Asturian that refers to the landslides that frequently occur on the roads on the slopes of the mountains. So frequently that, in Asturias, the media usually use it without translating it into Spanish. The poet Berta Piñán, one of the greatest exponents of Asturian poetry (and in Asturian) in recent decades (since she was part of the so-called Second Generation of Surdimientu, along with other poets such as Xuan Bello or Antón García), wants to translate it in this new collection of poems as

a collapse

. In the bilingual collection of poems

Argayu

/

Derrumbe

(Bartleby Ediciones) the conversation is staged, outside of time and space, of different generations of women, reflecting on family relationships (a recurring theme in the author), on relationships with nature or about that collapse of the title: the decomposition of the rural world in general, Asturian in particular, which for the poet represents the doubt of where to position herself to build a new identity and a future. The situation of the Asturian language, which Piñán practices and defends, could function as a correlate of all this.

On sale April 15.

Road

Manu Larcenet (adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy)

Norma Editorial, 2024. 160 pages. 29.50 euros

In 2006, Cormac McCarthy left the hearts of all his readers cold with that tragic post-apocalyptic story that he described under the title

The Race

, a gray world, where barbarism and still life reigned, and in which all traces of humanity had disappeared, referred to in this case to sensitivity and the capacity for compassion. Years later, Vigo Mortensen played in the film of the same name by John Hillcoat (2009) that father desperate to save his son before dying, on the way to a hypothetical south free of pollution and gangs of murderers. Now, the French cartoonist Manu Larcenet (1969), author of stories such as

Daily Combat

or

The Return to Earth,

recreates that terrifying nightmare world and puts other faces on the characters in some striking black and white pages [also in Catalan ].

On sale April 19.

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Move the moon. My night at the Acropolis Museum

Andrea Marcolongo

Translation by Juan Rabasseda Gascón and Teófilo de Lozoya. Taurus, 2024. 208 pages. 18.91 euros

In the midst of the debate on the restitution of archaeological heritage to their original countries, not lacking in controversy because it forces many nations to review their colonial past or, simply, their plundering antecedents for whatever reason, the return of archaeological heritage is once again in the foreground. Elgin Marbles, as the metopes of the Parthenon are known in the United Kingdom, on the Acropolis of Athens, a set of marble plaques originally located in the peristyle of the monument before its explosion in 1687 and which were rescued from destruction by Thomas Bruce, known as Lord Elgin, and transferred to London. The Italian writer Andrea Marcolongo uses the night of the waning moon that she spent in the Acropolis Museum as a framework to address this debate in this essay that mixes historical data, intimate confessions and political reflections.

On sale April 25.

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