The bloody Covid-19 pandemic stole the Spring Book Fair from us but, with a lot of effort and will, it let us celebrate an inner journey in autumn with another Cosmopoetics celebration.
Meanwhile, our bookstores opened and closed as if someone doubted that they were “essential services” and the union partnered on the platform todostuslibros.com to give itself visibility to global commerce that wanted to “put its boots on” in this troubled river.
Cordovan publishers and nearby authors responded with books for all tastes, of all genres and for all audiences. We review some of them here.
Almuzara
The series “Tapa Negra”, from the Almuzara publishing house, left us “Pecados Veniales”, the second novel by José Sánchez Vázquez, a fast-paced thriller that makes us reflect on urban hitting, concerted education or abuses of power. The crime novel is fertile ground for taking social radiographs and that puts us in front of Salvador Gutiérrez Solís in “El Lenguaje de las Treas”, also in the same publishing house, an authentic Russian novel-doll where, while a case of two missing girls is being solved , it puts its finger on sores such as social networks and their misuse, gender violence, corruption or the spurious role of the media –or some of them-. All this with the presence of Carmen Puerto, the dysfunctional inspector that Gutiérrez Solís has created and who has come to stay and to whom we await new adventures in the coming months.
Chant
Editorial Cántico has left us works such as Salvadora Drôme’s latest collection of poems, “How to say desire”, the reflections before facing a screen or a blank page such as those of the creator, poet, teacher and cultural manager Juan Antonio Bernier with its delicious “Brief Green Hedgehogs” or the strangely foreboding title of the journalist and poet Roberto Loya: “Kisses forbidden in Chinese cities” published just before the confinement that our year has starred in. Loya himself must keep wondering if he is guilty of this. The book is as magnificent as it is necessary to understand us.
Utopia
“I live as I speak” is the political testament of Julio Anguita that he also left us this year. Edited by Utopia Libros, it is a compilation of his latest writings, articles, manifestos and conferences. Its title leaves no room for misunderstandings, it is a hymn to the coherence of the politician and public figure who has summoned people of different opinions to converge in the unrepeatable personality of the one who was the first mayor of Córdoba after the dictatorship.
Utopia Libros has maintained its committed publishing line this year and has left us, among others, titles such as the flamenco reflection of Antonio Manuel in “Daño”, well-documented historical novels such as “Ab del Rahman al Dhali. El Príncipe emigrado ”, by Daniel Valdivieso or works emanating from the Córdoba Memory Forum as“ Peasants without land ”, signed by Luis Naranjo and Manuel Moral.
In another vein, the year has also left us the serene and settled voice of a poet like Antonio Luis Ginés, who has published his collection of poems “Antonov” in Bartleby Editores or the lexicographical essay “Almáciga”, in GeoPlaneta, where the poet , essayist and field veterinarian, María Sánchez has compiled words from the rural areas where she works. Words that would be lost if we left them “fallow” and that help us understand the countryside, who inhabits it and who works it. A necessary work that connects us with our roots.
And the poet and editor Elena Medel has opened up with her first novel, blessed by the Anagrama publishing house: “Las Maravillas”, a narrative that tells the life of two women from two different generations, emigres, who are looking for life. A work about money and its lack, about cyclical crises, about social decline. Absolutely moving, written from the tension and steady pulse of Medel.
The “fertile plain” of which Don Luis de Góngora spoke continues to bear fruit despite the barren year we have lived through. It is appreciated.
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