The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Safon:

Barcelona, 1945—just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel���s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

City of Marvels by Eduardo Mendoza (1986) : best seller about a young farmer who, at the time of the Universal Exposition of 1888, arrives at the great city, Barcelona, and becomes one of the richest and influential man in the country with methods absolutely no orthodox.

Eduardo Mendoza's City of Marvels recuperates the historical novel while subjecting it to the conventions of romance. These generic strategies relate to the manifest theme-a self-made man's rise to economic might between the two Barcelona World's Fairs and Barcelona's development as a modern metropolis-and to a later celebration: the 1992 Olympic Games. The depiction of the adventures of capital and the production of marvels responds to the bourgeoisie's role in Spain's modernization and to money's mediating function as a symbol of desire. The accomplishment of marvels involves the conquest of time and the substitution of illusory timelessness for historical contingencies. Timelessness mediated by money negates history through the production of ersatz historical images, which reinscribe an idealized past as the object of desire. A restoration-the figurative replication of historical events-is the response to nostalgia for a missed historical opportunity by a subject seeking myth's illusory power.

Eduardo Mendoza is a Spanish novelist, born in Barcelona, Spain on 11 January 1943. He studied law in the first half of the 1960s and lived in New York between 1973 and 1982, working as interpreter for the United Nations.

He maintained an intense relationship with novelists Juan Benet and Juan García Hortelano, poet Pere Gimferrer and writer (and neighbour) Félix de Azúa.

In 1975 he published his very successful first novel, La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (The Truth about the Savolta Case), where he shows his ability to use different resources and styles. The novel is considered a precursor to the social change in the Spanish post-Franco society and the first novel of the transition to democracy. He describes the union fights from the beginning of the 20th century, showing the social, cultural and economic reality of the Barcelona at the time. A year later he was awarded the Critic Prize.

His most acclaimed novel is probably La ciudad de los prodigios (The City of Marvels, 1986), about the social and urban evolution of Barcelona between the Universal Expositions of 1888 and 1929. It was adapted to the screen by Mario Camus in 1999.

In 1996, he published his third major Barcelona novel, this time set in the 1940s, Una comedia ligera (A Light Comedy).

Also within Mendoza's work stands the saga of Ceferino, a peculiar character, a detective locked up in a mental hospital. The first of these novels, El misterio de la cripta embrujada (The Mystery of the Bewitched Crypt, 1979) is a parody with hilarious moments mixing detective stories with gothic narrative.

In the second novel of the saga, El laberinto de las aceitunas (The Labyrinth of the Olives, 1982) he confirms his talent as parodist; the novel is one of his most successful works. The third (and last) novel of the saga, La aventura del tocador de señoras (The Adventure of the Powder Room) was published in 2002.

The newspaper El País published two of his novels by instalments, Sin noticias de Gurb (No Word from Gurb, 1990) and El último trayecto de Horacio Dos (The Last Journey of Horatio Dos, 2001).

In 1990, his work in Catalan Restauració made its debut. He later translated it into Spanish himself.

Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vázquez Montalban (1999) : The lights go out during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Spanish Communist Party - Fernando Garrido, the general secretary, has been murdered. Pepe Carvallo, who has worked for both the Party and the CIA, is well suited to track down Garrido's murderer. Unfortunately, the job requires a trip to Madrid - an inhospitable city whose gastronomic and sexual agendas are much inferior to those of Pepe's beloved Barcelona.

Manuel Vazquez Montalban lived in Barcelona where he was born in 1939. He was a journalist, novelist and creator of Pepe Carvalho, a fast-living, gourmet private dectective. Montalban has won both the Raymond Chandler Prize and the French Grand Prix of Detective Fiction for his thrillers, which are translated into all major languages.

Quim Monzó  (born March 24, 1952 in Barcelona, Spain), is a contemporary Catalan writer of short stories and discursive prose, mostly in the Catalan language. He lives in Barcelona and publishes regularly in La Vanguardia. His fiction is characterized by an awareness of pop culture and irony. His other prose maintains this humor. One collection of his essays, Catorze ciutats comptant-hi Brooklyn, is notable for its account of New York in the days immediately following September 11.

In the early 1970s, Monzó reported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Northern Ireland and Africa for the newspapers Índic and Tele/eXprés.

In collaboration with Cuca Canals, he wrote the dialogue for Bigas Luna's Jamón, jamón. He has also written El tango de Don Joan, with Jérôme Savary.

Books in English

• O'Clock, 1986. New York: Ballantine Books. Translated by Mary Ann Newman.
• The enormity of the tragedy, 2007. London: Peter Owen Publishers. Translated by Peter Bush.

Books in Catalan

• L'udol del griso al caire de les clavegueres, 1976. Winner of the Premi de Novel·la Prudenci Bertrana (1976).
• Self Service, 1977. In collaboration with Biel Mesquida.
• Uf, va dir ell, 1978.
• Olivetti, Moulinex, Chaffoteaux et Maury, 1980. Winner of the Premi de la Crítica Serra d'Or in 1981.
• Benzina, 1983.
• L'illa de Maians, 1985. Awarded the Premi de la Crítica Serra d'Or, 1986.
• La magnitud de la tragèdia, 1989. Winner of the Premi de Novel·la El Temps (1989.
• El perquè de tot plegat, 1993. Awarded the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona in 1993, and the Premi de la Crítica Serra d'Or in 1994.
• Guadalajara, 1996. Awarded the Premi de la Crítica Serra d'Or, 1997.
• Vuitanta-sis contes (comprising Uf, va dir ell, Olivetti, Moulinex, Chaffoteaux et Maury, L'illa de Maians, El perquè de tot plegat and Guadalajara), 1999. Awarded the Premi Nacional de Literatura and Premi Lletra d'Or, both in 2000.
• El millor dels mons, 2001.
• Mil cretins, 2007.

Rites of death, Alicia Giménez-Bartlett (1996): Though this is the third novel which Europa Editions has released in the Petra Delicado series (following Dog Days and Prime Time Suspect), it is the first in the series, chronologically.  Introducing us to Inspector Petra Delicado and her sergeant, Fermin Garzon, a detective combo which somehow “fits” perfectly despite their obvious differences, the novel explores their contrary life-styles, individual quirks, backgrounds, and age disparity. Petra, the “sophisticated…conspicuous, intelligent, and devoted” law partner of her husband Hugo,  abandoned their elegant law office—and the arrogant Hugo--to become a police officer, an inexplicable “step down,” in his opinion. 

Now in her thirties, she has remarried a charming, younger man named Pepe—and divorced him, too.   Pepe, however, is still dependent upon her and hangs around her new house wanting to be helpful, even dropping by on one occasion to leave a photograph of their cat on her sofa.  For her, “Contact with ex-husbands [was] a strange business.  Marriage was a fatty substance which always left stains on the skin, however much you scrubbed it with soap.”

This is Petra’s first real case.  Until now she has worked in the department of documentation, away from real crimes, but she tackles this investigation with all her considerable energy.  Feminist that she is, she is determined to prove that she is as tough as any of the men in the department.  Telling her own first-person story, she admits that “I was chuffed by my own military style…You had to whirl the whip overhead when someone thought to come and wish you good day.”

Fermin, also divorced, is estranged from his son, a doctor who lives in New York, but unlike Petra, he is softer and more sentimental--a laid-back and ferociously hard-working retiree from the Salamanca force, anxious to do his job in Barcelona.  Always aware that she is the inspector and he is the sergeant, he keeps his mouth closed when she becomes aggressive but stays around to pick up the pieces for her when that becomes necessary. Paunchy and in his fifties, Fermin lives in a dreary boarding house room but spends much of his time after work eating, drinking and talking at The Ephemerides, a bar owned by Pepe, Petra’s ex-husband.

In this novel, three young women have been raped, and they have all been branded on their forearms with a flower-shaped mark made by barbs.  None of the victims can or will provide any information, and Petra and Fermin must rely on tedious searches through databanks and plenty of legwork to come up with suspects.  What was the instrument used to brand the victims?  Who might have made it?  Who might have ordered it?  What, if any connections, exist between victims and rapist?  And ultimately, who would have murdered one of the victims, weeks after the crime?  Along the way, they must deal with the police hierarchy, which wants results, and with aggressive reporters who believe, and publicly state, that Petra and Fermin are unqualified for the job.

Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett, the author of this series and winner of the Feminino Lumen Prize as best female writer in Spain, is at least as interested (if not more interested) in character here as in dramatic action.  Concentrating on the intellectual contest between the rapist and the victims and eventually between a killer and victim, the author also shows Petra and Fermin as they engage in separate intellectual contests with the rapist and the murderer, with each other, with the police department, and with the press.  Gradually the lives and thoughts of the victims, suspects, and investigators are revealed.  Little action takes place on stage, except for a punch that Petra takes in the mouth, and the rapes and the murder of one of the first victims are  “reported” rather than presented “live.”  Blood, gore, and sensational action play little role in this novel.

For those who have read Prime Time Suspect, the third novel in this series (chronologically), Death Rites may seem simple and straightforward.  Giving the early background of Petra and Fermin and how they came to work together, it sets up the dynamics of their later partnership, which continues to develop as the series progresses.  The mystery itself is not very sophisticated or important here.  Though it is clever, it takes second place to the characters and how they became the people they are, both as victims and as aggressors.  Ultimately, “Everyone’s alone,” Petra says, “but that’s the way it is. If you’re alive, you have to keep on going…The important thing is inner peace, and that’s something no one knows how to achieve.” (Translated by Jonathan Dunn.)

The gray book, Joseph Pla (1966):  (March 8, 1897, Palafrugell, Girona - April 23, 1981, Llofriu, Girona) was a Spanish Catalan journalist and a popular author. As a journalist he worked in France, Italy, England, Germany and Russia, from where he wrote political and cultural chronicles in Catalan. The use of Catalan and therefore his works however was illegal in post civil war Spain.

His figure is somewhat controversial for present day Catalans. On the one hand, his prose is widely acknowledged as the finest standard of contemporary literature in Catalan but, on the other hand, his -nowadays, usually downplayed- ties to Francoist Spain are frowned upon by the current Catalan establishment.

Diamond square, Mercè Rodoreda (1962): Natàlia alias Colemeta works in a pastry in the district of Gràcia. She gets married, raises her children and becomes a cleaning lady. She loses her military husband in the republican army before knowing the hunger and despair. She marries again with the grocer in the corner during the second Republic.

Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (Barcelona, 1908 – Girona, 1983) was a Spanish Catalan novelist.

She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 20 languages. It's also considered by many to be best novel dealing with the Spanish Civil War.

The Time Of The Doves (known as The Pigeon Girl too) is a novel from the Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda (original novel's title: La Plaça Del Diamant (The Diamond Square)). It is considered by critics to be the author's masterpiece, it has already become a classic from the postwar literature in Spain (F.Franco's dictatorship period: 1936-1975). The novel, published from the first time in 1962, has been translated into more than twenty languages, for example into Japanese (Daiamondo Hiroba), into Italian (La Piazza Del Diamante), into French (La Place Du Diamant) or into Chinese (Zuanshi Guangchang).

The taste of Barcelona.(2003) Barcelona is the theatre of certain novels, or simply an evocation in travel or souvenir books in this small collection which extremely skillfully gathers texts from writers of this city. La Movida seen by Theophilus Gautier, Eduardo Mendoza, Montalban, Francisco Gonzales Ledesma, Paul Morand, Pedro Zarraluki and some others.