Search results for ""FUM D'ESTAMPA PRESS""

Wild Horses is a brutally powerful, unflinching account of the heroin epidemic that swept across Catalonia in the 1980s. The novel, told from a variety of points of view, tells the story of a group of friends as they buy, sell, and consume heroin and other drugs in their home town. Wild Horses is a kaleidoscope of voices, stories, song lyrics and heartbreakingly all-too-real characters. It is a true classic of modern story-telling that is both shocking and captivating at the same time.

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London Under Snow is delicate, compact, mature and profound collection of short stories about winter by Jordi Llavina. Six fragments of different lives in six different moment. In this beautifully written collection, the characters come face to face with their different lives and pasts, all of which are full of ghosts and memories. Sensibility courses through each story, all of them written with a meticulous eye to detail and a careful lyricism that pays tribute to the human condition and the society that we have created. Bringing winter and Christmas celebrations in a variety of places and cultures to life in a selection of beautifully written short stories, Llavina mixes personal experiences with fictional characters to blur the lines between fiction and reality. ‘Llavina exhibits his great ability to successfully penetrate our psyches.’ Lluís Muntada, El País ‘Presided over by tenderness and truth, Jordi Llavina’s stories are beautiful, cathartic masterpieces.’ Anna M. Gil, La Vanguàrdia ‘The narrative fabric of these stories is the voice - sensitive, powerful, complicated and dedicated - that Llavina creates for each of us. Almost personal, he whispers gently in our ears.’ Ramon Pla i Arxé, La Vanguàrdia

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This bilingual collection of both Maragall’s poetry and prose has been edited and translated by Ronald Puppo, a research fellow and translator at the University of Vic. His keen eye and expertise on Maragall comes across in droves as he takes what are arguably Catalan literatures finest moments and turns them into eminently readable and enjoyable English language poems. Also included in this collection are some of Maragall’s pieces of prose work and personal letters that shed light onto the man himself. Accompanying all this are Puppo’s own indepth comments and insights.

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Written in nine chapters separated into three blocks, Narcís Oller’s The Madness is one of the first literary pieces of work to aim to truly analyze the social and genetic causes and results of mental illness. Told through the eyes of an anonymous “narrator” character, The Madness tells the story of a young revolutionary called Daniel Serrallonga and his gradual deterioration into madness and delusion. Set against the backdrop of the political crisis that ripped Spain apart in the mid to late 19th century and laid the foundations of the Spanish Civil War, The Madness is a fascinating study of mental health within both rural and urban Catalan society. As relevant and entertaining now as it was when it was first published, this lively translation brings this fantastic piece of literature to new, modern audiences while drawing parallels with some of the 19th century’s greatest English language writers such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

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Two occupied buildings: one the former headquarters of the NO-DO (a Francoist propaganda outlet) that has been taken over by a small group of fascists, the other the ruins of some abandoned film studios that have been converted into the barracks of a Marxist-Leninist cell. Drifting between these two spaces are Santiago and Ramiro; two characters who, although finding solace in two polarised political groups, cross paths and change each other’s lives. Discursive and devastating, Duval’s first novel is imbued with the same traits as the era she portrays. A sad, passionate, and all too real portrait of an ever more divided world, Duval’s story, in her powerful, shocking, yet considered prose, reminds us of the uncomfortable, but somewhat comforting similarities we may find with the “enemy”.

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Poetry & Pose is the first time Jordi Llavina's work has been translated into English and published. The book is a collection of two of his most important and popular pieces of work: The Hermitage and The Pomegranate. In both, Jordi Llavina evokes the sights, sounds and smells of the Mediterranean landscape while weaving together themes of singular poetic beauty. The Hermitage, a long poem of more than 1400 lines, tells of the author's physical and metaphysical journey up a hill in southern Catalonia to visit a hermitage. Llavina touches on many themes in this poem, including love, death, family, loss, hope and memories. In 2019, Jordi Llavina was awarded the prestigious Lletra d'Or prize for this poem. The second piece of work in the collection is The Pomegranate. Again written about a journey, The Pomegranate is a mix of both poetry and prose and tells the story of a grieving wanderer through the Catalan countryside.

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Published for the first time in 1971, Forty Lost Years tells the story of Laura Vidal, a woman who becomes a high-fashion dressmaker to the rich women of Barcelona during Franco’s dictatorship. Rosa Maria Arquimbau’s masterpiece relives forty years of Catalan history from the proclamation of the Republic to the end of the 1960s and recreates the frivolous atmosphere of sexually liberal republican Barcelona and the desolation of a country defeated by the Fascists.

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When Anaïs learns of the imminent expropriation of the small family vineyard due to the upcoming construction of an estate, she demands that her father refuse out of dignity. From here, a solitary struggle begins, obsessive and irrational in the eyes of both relatives and neighbours alike, but which Anaïs seems ready to take all the way. Written in sweeping, elegant prose, Maica Rafecas brings us the beauty of the vineyard and the terrible human cost that modern-day capitalism makes us pay. September and the Night is at once an elegy to the land and its people, and a warning against those who might to use it for purely financial gains. This book acts as a rebellion, a reminder of the important things in life, and a call to arms, all within a beautifully written, almost fable-like novel.

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Griselda is the mother of three children, two boys and one girl. On a winter day in the mid-1980s, while exiled in France, she drowned her two sons in the bathtub. After a lapse of more than thirty years, the narrator tracks down the survivors of this family tragedy. She delves into their story in an attempt to approach these barely credible events, and ends up – in the depths of darkness – getting a glimpse of love and life. Laura Alcoba’s subtle, gentle writing accurately captures her characters’ humanity, without any overwrought sentiment, nor emphasis, in spite of the horrific facts. We feel the presence of beings resonating without, however, anyone ever being able to unlock the mystery of Griselda’s act – even Griselda herself.

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The pinnacle of Fuster’s essay writing, Final Judgements is a book of aphorisms that, used to teach moral and/or philosophical truths, reveal things that are relevant to the universal human experience. As Adam Gopnick of The New Yorker puts it, “the aphorism is, in its algebraic abbreviation, a micro-model of empirical inquiry.” And Fuster uses the aphoristic tradition, less to establish truths than to undermine them, to question the conceits contained in the established truism. Despite the seriousness of its subject matter, however, this book is laugh-out-loud funny, Fuster’s wit revealing that the best aphorisms are based in stripping language of its artifice and revealing its contradictions, and the cumulative effect is a quintessentially Mediterranean kind of playfulness.

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Pulling no punches in its 150 pages, Pharmakon is the story of an explosion, of the moment depression blew up the life the author thought she knew and settled in her body. But Pharmakon isn’t a sad book; it is testimony, written with humour and intimacy by one of Spain’s most singular voices, one that deftly combines wit, eccentricity, and warmth. Far from shrinking from taboos, Sánchez grabs hold of her depression and dredges it for the whys and hows, excavating her memory, behaviour, and craters of the mind: here there is infancy and the family home, youth at school in Mallorca and in the fields of Castile; psychiatrists who save and pills that bring her back to life; there are dreams, nightmares, and desires. And books, lots of books—some that serve to escape and others to understand what was happening in her head—because for Sánchez, literature is comfort, quest, and salvation. Pharmakon is an insight, from one of Spain’s most singular voices, into the experience of depression and recovery.

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A blank voice in the middle of the night tells Michaël Ferrier of the deaths of his friend François and his daughter Bahia. In the following devastation, speech resumes and memories return: how two young loners meet and connect, their years of study, their passion for cinema and radio. Memories unfold and gradually come together in a chronicle of friendship and a memorial to a lost friend. François, Portrait of an Absent Friend is both an elegy to a friend and a wonderfully delicate, poetic look at friendship in general. Ferrier tells us how friendships are formed, how they are lost, how they are maintained, and what happens when they are taken from us. From Paris to Japan, Ferrier transports us to the writer’s time and the place as we feel the pain, the bitterness, and the longing left by François’ death.

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Andrea Víctrix presents a dystopian vision of Palma, Mallorca, now named ‘Turclub’, in the year 2050. The unnamed narrator, who bears a certain resemblance to the author, had placed himself in voluntary cryo-stasis in 1965, fatigued by modern ‘civilization’ and morality, only to reawaken 85 years later with the physique of a 30-year old. Villalonga sets up an intriguing interplay between the narrator and the eponymous, androgynous Andrea Víctrix, so-called Director of Pleasure, in a satirical, sometimes self-ironizing exploration of contemporary issues such as gender and sexuality, consumerism, environmental disaster and the politics of big business. Both of its time and startlingly prescient, Andrea Víctrix merits a place amongst the greats of European dystopian fiction.

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This collection features one hundred poems selected by award-winning poet Jordi Larios. Keenly aware that we measure the world through words, he also knows that words become worn with use, and that poetry recalibrates their instrumentation, injecting them with fresh focus for graphing elusive terrains of inner and outer experience, prodding us to encounter and engage the world in a way that sustains and renews the self. Each Larios poem is a magnet, impacting us with the infixed force that its reading unleashes, subtle yet powerful in its imagery. A seagull, unfazed by the ‘crisis of the sunset,’ declares life on a greying backdrop (‘Rough Weather’), and desolate landscapes can set the scene for unexpected solace (‘Cold,’ ‘Historical Present’): pulling sunken memories to the surface and bringing poetic imagery into alignment with points of inwardness in search of outward counterparts. Along with the subtle power of imagery, Larios blends into his poems an uncanny marshalling of words, reassigning them to posts of optimal meaning and musicality. Technique underlies the poems, but the resulting art is greater than the sum of words, lifting language above ‘the clattering of / too many words,’ which, bereft of poetry, only render us alone (‘Man Alone’).

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Set on the island of Anjouan, Comoros, Deranged As I Am follows the story of a humble docker. With his ramshackle cart and patched-up clothes, he spends his days trying to find enough work to feed himself. This whirlwind of a novel takes place over just a few days, yet Zamir’s poetic and energetic prose transports us to the docks, its noises, colours, and smells, and the dynamism of his language along with his powerful mix of genres, and the cleverness of his verbal invention perfectly serve this tragicomedy that makes us feel both joy and pity. Yet this lively and often darkly humorous prose does not draw away from the more serious themes of class, poverty, and exploitation that Zamir explores. A rich and significant text that questions literature and language itself, Deranged As I Am confirms the very original place Zamir occupies in French literature.

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How does one experience things from the viewpoint of the other sex? It is this question that has led to Vildot’s creation of Ruth, the genre-defining story of a sex change told by the protagonist through a series of letters to an anonymous friend. Far from the condemnatory gaze or noise of those who understand life as nothing but outward appearances, Ruth demonstrates the sentimental and intellectual intimacy of a man transitioning into a woman, and describes a profund, touching process in which frustrations, ideas of liberty and changes of identity are interwoven. Without descending into easy morbosity or exhibitions of sensationalist tendencies, Ruth represents Guillem Viladot’s indignation at both masculine and feminine sensibilities, while championing diversity of thought, love, liberty, and, most importantly, desire.

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The Seven Deadly Sins is an ambitious project bringing together seven of the most exciting, vibrant voices in Catalan literature to write seven essays on what are perhaps the most enigmatic – and least understood – aspects of religion and morality. Drawing on many different sources, the essayists tell each sin’s story and origin in their own unique way to produce a collection that is frequently hilarious while always entertaining and informative. In Mara Faye Lethem’s stunning translation, these are essays that can be enjoyed as part of a whole or individually.

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In 1837, at the height of the Carlist Wars and a time of conflict between the past and future, a young Prussian man crosses the Pyrenees to fight for the ‘Order’. Finding himself trapped in the ruins of an abandoned city, his bewilderment at the war and what it means increases. Friendship, family, religion and politics: everything is distorted, transformed or destroyed. The Others oscillates masterfully between humour and tragedy and is a novel full of music, eccentric characters and extraordinary scenes.

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Award-winning poet, translator, and academic, Jaume Subirana is one of Catalonia’s most treasured poets, winning some of its most prestigious prizes for his poetry and essays. In an eloquent translation from accomplished poet and translator Christopher Whyte, The Silent Letter showcases Subirana’s sharp observations, delicate eye for detail, stunningly beautiful images, and poignant suspension of the moment.

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A mysterious traveller arrives in Turin for an atypical congress that disturbs the peace of the city while awakening a host of demons. From this enigmatic, hypnotic premise emerges a journey into light and darkness, desire and secrecy. An exquisite odyssey of characters and memorable scenes. Mixing legend, reality and religion, Josep M. Argemí has created a world of demons, exorcisms and another world existing parallel to our own. And he does this in a lyrical style that keeps the reader guessing until the very end.

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Atlantis is a majestic, epic poem and a lasting jewel of Catalan literary tradition. With a colossal architecture and a descriptive power that creates memorable passages of prodigious beauty - the vision of the garden of the Hesperides and the dream of Queen Isabel are just some examples - this poem was the winner of the Jocs Florals in 1877, the forging work of the modern Catalan literary language, and earned Verdaguer literary recognition in and outside of Catalonia.

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Empordan Scafarlata is a mirage of memories written with intelligence, irony, courage and tenderness; linking tradition, modernity, resentment and nostalgia for a mythical country and for that part of the river in which: ‘he will never swim again.’ In a mixture of prose and poetry, Adrià Pujol brings us snippets of Empordà, a region of northern Catalonia wedged between the mountains and the sea, and invites us onto its sweaty, well-trodden, exalted paths. All this he does it by avoiding conventions, clichés and with the sincerity of someone who writes about a world he loves and which for that very reason he does not simplify, rather elaborating it with powerful, eclectic prose, showcasing the writing that has pushed Adrià Pujol to the very forefront of great Catalan writing.

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The Intimate Resistance is a keen, deeply beautiful reflection on the human condition. The author explains how we ourselves can warm, protect and guide those around us. “The intimate resistance is the name for an experience belonging to a state of proximity; a state cannot be visited in one day, but rather habitually. Today, to remain in this state is by no means simple. Proximity cannot be measured in metres or centimetres. Its opposite is not distance, but rather the ubiquitous monotony of a world dominated by technology. What is clear is that day to day and home life are essential ways of experiencing proximity.”

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In Wilder Winds, Bel Olid presents a stunning collection of short stories that draw on notions of individual freedom, abuses of power, ingrained social violence, life on the outskirts of society, and inevitable differences. Alongside these are small acts of kindness capable of changing the world and making it a better place. Like flowers stubbornly growing and blooming in the cracks of a pavement, Olid’s work seeks out beauty without renouncing truth, and never avoids conflict or intimacy. Wilder Winds creates scenes and fragile, yet hardy characters that will stay with the reader for years to come.

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In the eight stories presented in The Song of Youth, Montserrat Roig (Barcelona, 1946-1991) employs language as a weapon against political and social “dismemory”, enabling the stories of those silenced by the brutal Franco regime to come to the fore. Feminist, critical but always lyrical, Roig’s writing gives shape and meaning to the human experience.

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Written in the form of a diary that runs from 1926 to 1928, English Hours is a delightful account of a Catalan in the UK during the inter-war period. In it, Soldevila writes endearingly of the country and people that he meets while providing us with an invaluable "foreign" look at this critical period in 20th century Great Britain. English Hours is not only an insight into British society during this period, but also provides a detailed look at the way two cultures can clash and yet how, ultimately, it is the people and individuals who make up our countries.

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In her debut title, Other People’s Beds, Anna Punsoda shines a light onto the darkest corners of the soul with a clean, sharp prose that is punchy, devastating, and tender at the same time. Punsoda beautifully highlights her protagonist's body, a body that has been carved out of stone by her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s frustrated apathy. This character’s stolen innocence leads to her to losing herself in other people’s beds. As shocking and sad as it is funny and liberating, Anna Punsoda’s Other People’s Beds has won unanimous plaudits in her native Catalonia. This powerful debut is written so beautifully and with such ease and fludity that Punsoda is most definitely one to watch.

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In outrageous, daring prose, Ventura Ametller tells the story of a young boy as he lives through the build-up to and outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Blending fact and fiction, legend and history, Summa Kaotica is a tour de force, an explosion of language and literature. It is one of the most outstanding, groundbreaking works of art ever written in the Catalan language. The book begins with the discovery of a tattered text belonging to the anti-historian Petter White O’Sullivan, and it is his text that the reader is reading. He tells the story of the creation of Anamorphus, formally Protomorphus, as he begins his life as a spermatozoon, then a foetus, before being born into the village of Poel. From here, we follow his life as he grows up and witnesses – often from a child’s point of view – some of the most important events on the 20th Century.

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