10 Who dares to claim that Catalan literature is in decline? I can only see an increasingly ambitious, increasingly powerful creativity. In recent years, more voices, more styles, more generations have coexisted than ever before, as well as more proposals than in our entire history. Given this, I declare that it is evident that we do have State structures: publishing in Catalan, translation into Catalan, and literature in Catalan are undoubtedly so. Because there are books that contain, within themselves, countries and utopias. This is the sensation I have had reading recent epic epics that capture the essence of our chaotic and exciting world such as Cor pirinenc, by Lluís Calvo (Lleonard Muntaner, Editor, Jacint Verdaguer Prize); Arnau, by Adrià Targa (Editorial Proa, Critics' Prize), and El Periple, by Damià Rotger Miró (Galés Edicions, Mallorca Poetry Prize 2025).

]]> In the interviews that Mahmud Darwish gives in the beautiful volume La Palestina com a metàfora (Lleonard Muntaner, Editor), the Palestinian poet delves into crucial themes, such as the idea of permanent exile and the breakdown of History due to the fragility of the links of transmission –an idea that Lluís Calvo analyzes in the magnificent essay Els llegats (Arcàdia) – and also into the fact that the body has become the last bulwark, the last refuge, the definitive weapon with which to continue the fight in these times of chaos. I would dare to say that this is one of the keys to understanding the proliferation and exaltation of corporeal poetics and morbid poetry, essential trends in 21st-century Catalan poetry in a movement of forces that markedly opposes a recalcitrant neo-formalism that returns to meter and rhyme as foundations for verse writing. I thought of all this while reading, and enjoying, El cant de les cigales, the newest and most brutal title by the Llucmajor poet Cecília Navarro, a work more than worthy of the 43rd Manuel Rodríguez Martínez Ciutat d’Alcoi Poetry Prize.

]]> A novel permeated by the breath of William Faulkner and the darkness of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. A novel constructed from the investigation of narratological mechanisms, full of perspectives and contradictions, in the manner of the prodigious Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. A novel with golden voices like those of the enigmatic and sick characters of Clarice Lispector. A novel that dialogues with international literature but is made in our land, and with beautiful winks to masters from here like Mercè Rodoreda and Jaume Cabré. A novel, indeed, that speaks tellurically of the territory, digging its fingers like roots into an extreme and fascinating land. A novel that seems like History because it has known how to use the gears of fiction, a precious lie, to reach raw human truths. A powerful, polyphonic, and wild novel. A novel that exists: Bèsties en el foc, by Joan Roure, published by La Magrana. This formidable work rises like a verbal cathedral of almost mystical intensity, a dark and incandescent song that originates from Ponent – a land that is not a backdrop, but rather energetically nourishes the author's imagination and imbues the work with a moral and symbolic density that dialogues with the rawness of the multiplied history that unfolds – to become a radical exploration of memory, guilt, and uncertainty. Through the voices of Mateu, Ramon, and Carme, the narrative unfolds like a choral architecture of devastating power where abused childhood becomes a witness and the word, a form of redemption. With a landscape of mists and silences that becomes almost another character, Joan Roure constructs a story of forbidden loves, hidden passions, and long-concealed confessions that, upon emerging, devastate everything. The novel is a burning immersion into the darkest corners of the human soul, where madness and lucidity touch, and where literature, in its most sublime gesture, becomes a form of poetic justice capable of illuminating what time had condemned to muteness. The themes it touches upon are most interesting: how wounded consciences add fuel to the bath of traumas that bog down spirits, various forms of emotional and physical survival in times of misery, political dissent, resistance networks, and the rough friction of opposing viewpoints not as a communicative impossibility but as an expression of the chaos that grounds us. For all these reasons, Bèsties de foc, by Joan Roure, is an admirable narrative artifact where truth is never univocal and the reader is invited to inhabit ambiguity, to read between the lines, and to enjoy the terrible and beautiful mysteries of the world and of life. Without a doubt, an essential book from now on.

]]> With his first film (The 400 Blows), François Truffaut began a cinematic cycle starring a fictional character (Antoine Doinel, alter ego of Truffaut himself) who embodied different films, always played by the same actor (Jean-Pierre Léaud). From this filmed continuum, the beloved French filmmaker was able to explore the complex and exciting paths of a human being's life. I thought of this artistic example while reading Pere Joan Martorell's new and ambitious novel, Nits sense ales (Nights without wings) from Pagès Editors, as through its pages we can once again encounter a character who has starred in other works by the Lloseta writer, such as the Llibre de les revelacions (Book of Revelations) (Editorial Moll, 2007), because Amador is, in effect, Martorell's correspondent in possible parallel and quantum universes. In a literary adventure that connects him with Solenoide, by Mircea Cărtărescu, Pere Joan Martorell does not recreate his life in the mirror of fiction, but reinvents it from turning points that could have occurred, and thus recovers Amador, a psychologist and writer in a center dedicated to behavioral disorders. But every story begins with a turning point, that is, with a change, a disorder, and it is here when the appearance of Judith, a young woman marked by a past of brutal violence and abuse, activates a narrative mechanism of high emotional tension. Her voice, which emerges with difficulty between shame and urgency, challenges the therapist and destabilizes him to the point of forcing him to confront his own limits. It is then that the work unfolds like a progressive infernal descent towards the most opaque zones of the mind and society, with a highly symbolic language and images of powerful impact. The world that is drawn around the characters, with the presence of a sordid network of domination and exploitation, is not merely a setting that draws from a real case: it acts as an amplifier of internal conflicts. But what truly sustains the novel is its formidable ability to show how evils are not only external, but above all intimate, embedded in memory and the body. Martorell develops a story that skillfully moves through the margins of moral ambiguity, exploring the fine line that separates compassion from desire.With a ductile and intensely expressive prose, which knows how to alternate sharp cuts with moments of restorative delicacy, Nits sense ales, by Pere Joan Martorell, is a striking account of vulnerability and the search for redemption, a novel that delves without concessions into the most fragile and uncomfortable territories of human experience, where wound and desire are confused and where the need for empathy becomes almost a matter of survival.

]]> Last Easter Sunday, in a gesture that was both solemn and sly, very much in his provocative and vitalist way of being, one of the most important authors of Catalan literature bridging the 20th and 21st centuries died: Josep Piera. Heir to Ausiàs Marc, but also to Cavafis and Penna and Bufalino, he was one of the poets of the 70s generation who burst onto the scene with the most force: in the mythical Tafal collection –led by Andreu Vidal and Àngel Terron– he published one of his best titles, Drafts of Music. Over the years he also became a great narrator (Tale of the Return) and a referential prose writer with unforgettable essays, such as the one about his Neapolitan stay (A Beautiful Baroque Corpse), and diaries full of atavistic wisdom on par with the volumes of one of his masters, Josep Pla (especially noteworthy is the very brutal Whore of the Post-War).Josep Piera, collaborator of the photographer Toni Catany in the sensational work Visions de Tirant lo Blanc, was a poet not only because he had managed to write some of the most powerful verses in our history, but above all for his open attitude, perpetually vital despite personal and collective difficulties, and it was in this way that he managed that the saying “between being a poet and living there is a beautiful possibility that is living poetically” by his admired Joan Vinyoli – to whom he dedicated the precious book Vinyoliana– ended up being an existential banner. His intuition also helped him to understand, very early on, that the Catalan Countries are fortunate to be in a splendid corner: the heart of the Mediterranean. From this axis, he built a very coherent personal cosmogony steeped in tradition that sings this space of commerce, exchange, dialogue, creation, and passions. Broadening this thread, he dedicated part of his efforts to translating Andalusian poets (Trobadors amb turbant) and to navigating our sea and our landscapes. From this organic fervor, he offered us his latest book published a few months ago, Tot són ones from Editorial Afers, a collection of articles that read as if they were prose poems or fragments of a secret autobiography steeped in personal adventures and novelistic flair. Tot són ones is a choral ode in which Josep Piera sublimates his concept of Mediterranean. From beating squares to intimate landscapes charged with memory and desire, the book unfolds a psychogeographical cartography where each place is both origin and projection. The work thus becomes a conscious celebration of a shared civilization that not only recognizes the cultural and literary ties that have forged the author's voice, but reactivates them as a commitment, a will for belonging and continuity, a vital feast. Tot són ones is, indeed, the golden seal of a canonical trajectory that reaches its end. I already miss you, Pep.

]]> For years I have been fascinated by the life and work of Iris Murdoch, one of the most extraordinary writers of the 20th century, and I am delighted to have become one of her most staunch defenders, as an exalter of her verbal prodigies but also as a translator of some of her best novels. That is why I am pleased that a selection of her essays is now reaching our language and our culture. Because, although there are books that invite us to think, the most important ones are those that invite us to rethink, that is, textual mechanisms that are actually machinery of words and thoughts that incite us to understand why we think as we think. Existentialists and Mystics. Writings on Philosophy and Literature, by Iris Murdoch, published by La Blanca at Edicions 62 with an excellent translation and clarifications by Maria-Arboç Terrades, clearly belongs to this happy category. We are faced with a compendium of writings that not only are founded on the pillars of philosophy and literature, but also question their limits and essences, and above all propose moral reflections of the utmost, strict, necessity. And this, in an increasingly immoral and sordid world – amidst vile wars in Iran and Ukraine and the appalling revelation of the declassified Epstein archives revealing a global network of prostitution, pedophilia, and satanic rituals –, is fundamental, I would even dare to say, a triumph. The volume, very well chosen and prefaced by the philosopher, writer, and editor Raül Garrigasait, allows access to an essayist Iris Murdoch who is, at the same time, traditional and singular, incisive and uncomfortable, illuminating and blinding, crystal clear and questioning, forceful and ironic. Although she appreciates Sartre's contributions, it is ultimately the decisive influence of Plato and the mystics that forms the basis of her system of ideas, a cosmos that constantly claims the moral dimension of art. It is also important to highlight the connections with Simone Weil's concept of alterity and empathy when Iris Murdoch argues that the best literature is a school of attention, a way of learning to see with more precision and less ego. Undoubtedly, one of the most stimulating elements ofExistentialists and Mystics is the balance between ethical rigor and aesthetic theory: Murdoch never completely separates these two spheres, and this makes the book a constellation of sparks that feed back into each other.Existentialists and Mystics, by Iris Murdoch, is a profoundly enriching, shamelessly exciting read, a brilliant edition that means the legacy of this brilliant author is reaching our shores as it deserves.

]]> With Trast, fresh from the oven of the LaBreu Edicions factory on a twentieth anniversary that is achieving a lot of recognition, Biel Mesquida signs one of the most abundant and necessary books of his career, a poetic work that arrives at the right moment: after the well-deserved recognition of the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, but also in a sociological and political period of great global turbulence, with a disastrous return to far-right tendencies that should concern us much more. Trast is a manifesto, a fiery textual proposal that explodes in our faces to remind us that the voice of this pan-Catalan creator is fundamental because it builds foundations and, moreover, is in full catalytic combustion, in furious carnage. This new volume made of exalted verses is an explosion of lucid rage and vindicatory energy that grants no respite: a long and torrential poem fragmented into eight songs that arises from an almost physical urgency and unfolds just like a proud fountain that does not stop flowing, faithful to the propulsive impulse. Here, cruel beauty is not an escape but a sacred place from which demands for radical justice are raised, spoken with all names and all scars, both those of the body and those of the spirit. Biel Mesquida establishes a tense and vibrant dialogue with the maladjustments of History. Perceptive consciousness, always finely tuned, is traversed by the injustices that bleed, both inherited and current, as if the (in)civil war of '36 had not fully closed. In this sense, Trast is a polyphony of rebellion but also of revelation: the title itself condenses a devastating diagnosis of the present, of an island landscape turned into residue, of a massacred time in which territory, language, and custom seem to dissolve under the weight of material and symbolic perversions. And yet, far from any apocalyptic temptation, Mesquida's poetry does not resign itself; it dares to continue radiating linguistic powers that reactivate sensibilities and shake memories until they are once again incisive, critical, alive. In this quintessential volume there is a reckless density, a defined personality that refuses to be closed off, baring itself completely: each verse is written at the limit, with an intensity that invites reading with all senses open. In dialogue with major pieces of his work such as the poem 'Sgt. Pepper Wants You: Auca', the mosaic that is Trast resumes and multiplies the ability to converge epic and barbarism, culture and experience, collage and chant in a flow that is both tradition and postmodernity. The result is an extraordinary artifact that gallops between centuries and registers, and that confirms Biel Mesquida as an essential creator: a writer who writes and transforms language into a force capable of resisting, denouncing, and dreaming.

]]> The publication of Bernhard's monumental novel Extinction The Catalan edition by Quid Pro Quo Edicions, with a magnificent translation by Clara Formosa Plans, is a literary event of the first order. Thomas Bernhard's most ambitious novel finally arrives in a Catalan edition capable of sustaining the extreme demands of its style: long, obsessive, circular sentences that function as a mechanism of thought rather than as simple narration, confirming that Bernhard was not only a master of the most contemplative narratologies. Zeitgeist epochal.

]]> It seemed that Julià de Jòdar had, in a Pasolinian fashion, renounced writing after the colossal and unclassifiable novel. The deserter on the battlefield in Proa. But he returned. And what a return! All thanks to the gentle persistence of the Comanegra Publishing team, who invited him to perpetrate The vulnerable, prequel to the great trilogy Chance and shadows, which continued to stir the tail with the Orson Wellesian volume The boarded-up houseTherefore, it wasn't a triptych but a whole saga, which now expands, to our delight, with The sleepless nightsHowever, during this waiting period, Julià de Jòdar's pen has continued to stir, and it has done so with two remarkable volumes: Gabriel Caballero Variations in Puente del petróleo (the most outstanding examples of its Badalona psychogeography) in The murmur from the borders Ensiola (a collection of some twenty high-caliber literary articles). Not to mention the collective volume, coordinated and edited by Júlia Ojeda, which was published by Lleonard Muntaner, Editor: The Forging of Days: Critical Approaches to the Work of Julià de JòdarNo joke.

]]> Within the framework of international criticism, a unanimous consensus has been reached: it is considered that Rotten creaturesAmy Twigg's literary debut is a subversive, extraordinarily well-written novel, a work that elevates the category of cult literature. Therefore, it is a brilliant and significant achievement that this contemporary marvel is now part of the Ediciones de la Ela Geminada catalog, with a splendid translation by the writer Anna Carreras i Aubets. Interestingly, the title is a quote from a letter that Vita Sackville-West sent to Virginia Woolf, a brilliant correspondence that is another of the undisputed gems in the catalog of this formidable and daring Girona-based publisher.

]]> As you wish, brothers, that I sing, Joan Pons Bover's novel, published by Isla Ediciones, is a work of continuous and persistent power that goes in crescendoIt doesn't go for easy effects; rather, it unfolds its multiple narrative strengths as it progresses. Although it may sound cliché, this is indeed a captivating work that you can't put down, and which, like the prodigious film,... One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson's film is a magnificent artistic offering that arrives at an opportune moment, as it also functions as an extremely political, yet subtle, artifact that, with the fury of good fiction, denounces the current state of affairs, devastated by this abominable return of the far right and fascist policies disguised under democratic masks. Thus, with surgical precision, layers of memory and wounded dignity are laid bare.

]]> In the context of the centenary of the death of the poet Joan Alcover, one of the key anniversaries of 2026 along with the Clementina Arderiu Year and the Blai Bonet Year, Edicions 62 is releasing the complete and critical edition of his Poems Edited by Ignasi Moreta, who traces the circumstances of the texts' composition, offers a useful critical interpretation, provides metrical and rhythmic details, and, to top off a continuous masterclass, comments on possible variations in previous editions. What a compendium! We are faced with a fundamental, extremely important work that establishes, organizes, clarifies, structures, and brings together, as never before, the corpus of Alcover's Catalan-language production.

]]> I discovered the poet Ramon Guillem thanks to the songs that singer-songwriter Miquel Gil had created based on some of the most emblematic texts of the author from Catarroja. From then on, I read him avidly and was even lucky enough to meet him—and I say "lucky" because he was an exceptional human being. Our first in-person meeting was, in fact, in Llucmajor during the Cavall Verd awards ceremony organized by Miquel Bezares and dedicated to Maria Antònia Salvà. Laughing, I told him about the anthology of young poets we were preparing at the time. FirestoneAnd his face turned one of the palest whites I've ever seen before he told me that was the title he'd thought of for the book of poems he was writing. He had to change it, but it was for the better, since his book ended up being called Abyss and bird, as a tribute to the composer Olivier Messiaen and the very famous movement "Abîme des oiseaux" of the Quartet pour el fin takes time.

]]> Poem of Desire It is an epic poem that assumes, from the outset, a lofty philosophical and poetic ambition. Rosa Font Massot shapes her new work from a theoretical framework she herself articulates: a dialogue with Baruch Spinoza and Simone Weil. From the former, she takes the idea that the essence of humankind is desire. From the latter, the intuition that desire projects humankind toward the absolute and the limitless. These two pillars of thought underpin a literary investigation that understands desire not only as an erotic impulse but also as thought, language, and the power of ontological projection. The work constructs a literary space in which desire is not confined to the relationship between bodies; it expands until it merges with the world: desire is a fusion with nature, with what is perceived, and with what we are. This expansion transforms the experience of desire into a way of knowing, speaking, and inhabiting reality. The body is not only pure desiring matter; it is also a fascinating cognitive vehicle.

]]> The bilingual edition of the volume Tragedies I The collection of works by the immense Pier Paolo Pasolini, published by Prometeu—with the sponsorship of the Institut del Teatre and the Barcelona Provincial Council—constitutes a significant editorial contribution to the field of contemporary Catalan-language drama. Calderón, Fabulation and PillsThis powerful book allows us to explore a creative arc that ranges from the modern pastiche of Golden Age tragedy to the dissection of bourgeois family and society, and the necessary return to Greek myths as the matrix of ideologies in perpetual conflict. This energy undoubtedly resonates with the desperate vitality that marked the life of the Italian genius. In addition to restoring a body of work often relegated by the author's centrality in film and literature, this publication focuses on Pasolini as a political playwright, always attentive to the material and symbolic metamorphoses of Power in its purest form.

]]> Haceldama It is an Aramaic word (AkeldamaThe title, which means 'field of blood,' refers to the piece of land bought with Judas's coins that would later become a cemetery for foreigners. It is also the title of Blai Bonet's second and so unjustly maligned novel, which now sees the light of day again thanks to a meticulous edition by Nicolau Dols for Club Editor, a publishing house that has already managed to recover each and every one of the author's published novels. The goal is twofold, as the work breathes again with the original voice conceived by the unbridled novelist, without the excessive and unnecessary corrections it suffered at Editorial Aymá and which had dragged Ensiola into the reissue. Therefore, we are witnessing a noble act of literary recovery, but also a true celebration that arrives at the beginning of this Blai Bonet Year, which has barely begun. Thus, we are witnessing a cultural event of the first magnitude.

]]> Far from the train Antonia Vicens's novel strikes with unusual force, confirming, page after page, the indomitable talent of an already essential author. La Magrana's publication twenty-five years after the first edition is not only an act of justice, but above all an invitation to (re)discover a work that remains radically relevant. Cecilia's story, immersed in an emotional and physical vertigo marked by AIDS, unfolds with a disarming and visceral intensity: Vicens sugarcoats nothing, offers no protection to the reader, and it is precisely thanks to this naked and stark gaze that a most painful tragedy unfolds, leaving her a monstrous, unspeakable figure. The suffering, the fear, the delirium, the fragility, and the conversations and interactions with angels are not described, they are narrated and experienced in the first person through an incisive, wounding prose that transforms the reading into a raw, profound, and unforgettable experience, a relentless read that—I know this for a fact—is truly remarkable.

]]> If last week I praised an essay that invites you to fly (The winged ones (by Elisabet Riera, published by Males Herbes), today I will celebrate a poetry collection that invites us to delve into the exultation of blue. It is aboutThe diver Ricard Martínez Pinyol's book, published by LaBreu Edicions, is a volume in which each composition is a sonic artifact, a piece of verbal ingenuity where the word not only signifies but also resonates, reverberates, and intertwines with the others as if weaving an organic web. The poet writes with an almost sculptural awareness of language, working the balance between rhythm and emotion, between the inner pulse of the verse and the idea that runs through it. The page becomes a living space, a small ecosystem where the ink doesn't drip uselessly but flows, and where the text's internal music sustains a precise yet not rigid architecture. This desire to create a sonic and physical experience places the reader on the aquatic stage of the verses not as a spectator, but as a body propelled by a current, listening to its ripples and perceiving, in a Greco-Latin way, its pressure, sensual and dangerous.

]]> There are books that help doves take flight in the most delightful way: they are capsules of salvation that ignite the imagination and help us ascend, to reconcile our spirits in the beautiful dream of a collective (un)consciousness. With one of these special books, I want to begin this new year, 2026, perhaps with the secret hope that this year we will spread our wings and take flight with the passion ignited by the most powerful literature and the illusions it contains. I am speaking of the magnificent essay The winged ones, by Elisabet Riera, published by Editorial Males Herbes and endorsed by the increasingly prestigious Finestres Essay Grant.

]]> If in 2025 we celebrated the centenary of Josep M. Llompart's birth, in 2026 there will be a grand celebration for Blai Bonet, as it will be one hundred years since this illuminating writer came into the world to shake up life and poetry. Thanks to Edicions de 1984, we are fortunate to enter this Blai Bonet Year with the corrected and expanded critical edition of the Complete Poetry, by the writer from Santanyí, edited by Nicolau Dols and Gabriel ST Sampol, with a revised prologue by Margalida Pons. This fantastic 1,374-page volume expands upon what was published eleven years ago, recovering previously unpublished texts duly retrieved from the Bernat Vidal i Tomàs Archive, and also includes new poems or poems already known but with notable variations.

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