This is our literary selection to celebrate the arrival of summer.
A chance meeting
A young gypsy woman who runs away from her family to escape an arranged marriage and a refugee, a watchmaker by trade, who welcomes her into his shop. The chance encounter fosters a new horizon: she believes in destiny and signs, while he, through her power, believes in the gears of the world’s machine as the rules of the Mikado’s game. An understanding between the two that will always last, despite the distance. Their decisions will change the course of their lives. ‘The rules of the Mikado’. Erri de Luca. Six Barral. 144 pages. Price: €16.15
Ten years without Ana María Matute
We look at the writer and academic, Cervantes, Nadal and Planeta winner and one of the great voices of the post-war novel and Spanish literature of the 20th century. From Matute, who died at 88 on June 25 ten years ago, we recovered Luciérnagas from her. An honest manifesto about the strength of true love and the fight for the survival of life in the face of the barbarity of the Civil War. As a backdrop, a Barcelona of soldiers, refugees, homeless people, rubble, bombs and hunger. ‘Fireflies’. Ana María Matute. Astra. 320 pages. Price: €9.45.
Of anguish and loneliness
Sara and Thomas find themselves immersed in a conspiracy theory directed by political and economic powers, who want to control individuals through hypnosis and subliminal messages in books, video games and music. The objective: induce suicide. The protagonists face their own emotional imbalances, while an unclassifiable relationship is woven between them. Together they investigate this sect named after an insect that prefers to kill itself rather than endure pain. ‘Scorpions’. Sara Barquinero. Lumen. 805 pages. Price: €23.90
Escaping from your past
The virtuoso and celebrated pianist Elsa Anderson, 34, is at the peak of her career until she leaves the stage during a performance in Vienna. Actually, the story begins with Elsa in Athens, at a flea market, where she meets a very familiar woman who has just bought two mechanical horses. She follows up with a trip to the small Greek island of Poros, escaping her past as a child prodigy. Behind goes that woman who could be herself. ‘August Blue’. Deborah Levy. Random House. 168 pages. Price: €17.95
