From heat wave to heat wave and I shoot because it’s my turn. This year summer is more summer than ever and you don’t feel like much more than lying in front of the fan or soaking in beaches and swimming pools. Of course, always with a good book in hand, that vacations are also to rest from screens. This list of books that have been awarded in recent months is to enter your trusted bookstore, leave with a load and not fail in your choice.
Nostalgia from another worldOttessa Moshfegh
Awards: Pushcart, O. Henry and Plimpton Discovery Prize.
What is it about? There is something sinister and unnerving that runs through Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories, something dangerous, fascinating and sometimes irresistibly funny. Her characters are unstable beings: they yearn for a gesture of tenderness and wish, in her way, to become better people; even so, they all seem to move guided by the most primal impulses. Weak, twisted, often stupid and cruel to themselves and others: from this strange raw material Moshfegh manages to extract a dark and electric beauty and that, in it, what we see is actually our own reflection.
Nostalgia for another world (Literatures)
forms of loveInes Martin Rodrigo
Awards: Novel Nadal 2022
What is it about? Noray, faced with the unexpected death of his grandparents, who taught him the many forms of love, locks himself in the family home in the town, where he grew up and was happy. There she decides to face the novel that she has been putting off for years: the story of her family, linked to that of a country too afraid to remember the civil war.
Through writing, Noray he will evoke the lives of those who made his possible and will deal with his worst fears and ghosts. This story will come, without her knowledge, at the hands of Ismael, the love of her life, who will be reading, in a hospital room, the pages of that story whose end will forever mark the destiny of both.
The forms of love: Nadal Novel Prize 2022: 1560 (Ancora & Dolphin)
the library of fireMaria Saragossa
Awards: Azorín Novel Award 2022
What is it about? In the effervescent Madrid of the thirties, Tina dreams of becoming a librarian. Together with her friend Veva de ella, she will delve into a world of cabarets and feminist clubs, cursed books and old ghosts. This is how they will discover the Invisible Library, an ancient secret society that watches over forbidden books.
Soon Madrid becomes a besieged city, where culture is in more danger than ever. In the midst of a war that devastates everything, Tina will live a clandestine love story that will mark the rest of his existence while trying to protect the books, not only from fires and bombs, but also from ignorance and looters.
The Library of Fire: Azorín Novel Award 2022 (Spanish and Ibero-American Authors)
BrightnessRaven Leilani
Awards: NBCC John Leonard Prize, Kirkus, The Center for Fiction First Novel Award, Dylan Thomas Award, and the VCU Cabell for Best Debut.
What is it about? Barack Obama’s favorite book best seller in the list of New York Times and ongoing adaptation to HBO series, Brightness tells the story of Edie, a 23-year-old African-American woman who has an affair with a 41-year-old married white man. This privileged but progressive couple invites her to work at his house. Home, full of tensions and discoveries, then becomes something else.
Bye little one, maximum orchard
Awards: Fernando Lara Novel Award 2022
What is it about? “My mother would have been happier if I hadn’t been born.” Thus begins the harrowing testimony of a writer faced with the harshest of his narratives: that of his own life. Assaulted by memories of him as he cares for his sick mother, the past presents itself with voids that he cannot fill.
Through silences and a great talent for observation, the author lays bare his intimacy and presents us, with beauty and mastery, the portrait of a country and a time from his own family universe. He is accompanied as a confidant by his old pet, a loyal and charming dog.. A beautiful farewell story. The exciting reconstruction of a childhood in which everyone (grandparents, parents and children) has been too silent.
Goodbye, little one: Fernando Lara Novel Award 2022 (Spanish and Ibero-American Authors)
The third paradise, Cristian Alarcón
Awards: Alfaguara Novel Prize 2022
What is it about? A writer cultivates his garden on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Until there come the memories of his childhood in a town in southern Chile, the stories of his ancestors, his grandmother, his mother. Also the exile to Argentina and how in that exile it is the women who sow the orchard, the gardens, the solidarity, the collective.
Novel without gender, hybrid and poetic, read the third paradise is to enter in an instant the universe of Cristian Alarcón, author of this literary, botanical and feminist journey which, far from exhausting itself on a first reading, asks us to return to the text in order to be able to answer the many questions it raises.
The third paradise (Alfaguara Novel Award 2022)
Operation KazanVicente Valles
Awards: Spring Prize for Novel 2022
What is it about? The protagonists of Operation Kazan travel from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the American elections of the 21st century, going through the horrors of the Second World War, the Normandy landings, the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the communist regimes in the 1990s and the current Russian interference in Western democracies. What role will the young spies Teresa Fuentes, from the Spanish CNI, and Pablo Perkins, from the CIA, play in the decisive phase of this intrigue?
Operation Kazan: Spring Novel Award 2022 (ESPASA NARRATIVA)
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