Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Not all Catalan writers write in Catalan, but rather in Spanish, including perhaps the best-
known of all -
Manuel Vasquez Montalban
(1939-2003), crime writer
par excellence
,
and novelist, poet, journalist, political commentator and committed Communist to boot.
His Pepe Carvalho books do nothing less than expose the shortcomings of the new Span-
ish democracy in fast-changing Barcelona. Montalban's contemporary
Juan Marse
(born
1933) uses the post-Civil War dictatorship as the background for many of his Barcelona-
set novels, and it's the same period that spawned the Barcelona blockbuster
The Shadow
of the Wind
by
Carlos Ruiz Záfon
(born 1964), and its prequel
The Angel's Game
. For
other new Catalan writers, such as
Albert Sánchez Piñol
(born 1965), nationality seems
incidental atbest-hiswell-regarded firstnovel,
ColdSkin
,isacreepy psychological sci-fi
taleofsolitudeonanAntarcticisland,whileliteraryadventurestory
PandoraintheCongo
starts in the dark heart of the African jungle.
HISTORY
BARCELONA
JimmyBurns
Barça:APeople'sPassion
.Ononelevel,it'ssimplyaninformativehistory
of the city's famous football team, alma mater of Cruyff, Lineker, Maradona, Ronaldinho
et al. However, like the club itself, the topic is so much more than that, as Burns examines
Catalan pride and nationalism through the prism of sport.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the City's Past
. An expertly
written appraisal of what the author sees as the formative years of the city's history, from the
tenth to the early twentieth century.
Robert Hughes
Barcelona
. The renowned art critic casts his accomplished eye over two
thousand years of Barcelona's history and culture, with special emphasis on the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries - explaining, in his own words, “the zeitgeist of the place and
the connective tissue between the cultural icons”.
Matthew Stewart
Monturiol's Dream
. Witty and engaging account of the life and work
of Narcís Monturiol, the nineteenth-century Catalan utopian visionary, revolutionary and in-
ventor of the world's first true submarine. Stewart places Monturiol firmly at the centre of
Barcelona's contemporary social and political turmoil - printing seditious magazines, man-
ning the barricades in the 1850s, fleeing into exile and returning to pursue his pioneering in-
vention.
Colm Tóibín
Homage to Barcelona
. Echoing Orwell, the Irish writer pays his own homage
to the city, tracing Barcelona's history through its artists, architects, personalities, organiza-
tions and rulers.
