eduardo mendoza

Catalan writer Eduardo Mendoza was proclaimed winner of the European Book Prize 2013 in the novel category for An Englishman in Madrid (Riña de gatos, Madrid 1936). Mendoza rose to fame in the late 1970s and the 1980s by publishing several books on his home-town, Barcelona. However, in his latest novel, the writer has decided to explore the political tensions in Madrid at the very beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936), through the perception of a foreigner, an Englishman. The other finalists were Luciana Castellina for Discovering the World, Vassilis Alexakis for The Greek Child (L’Enfant Grec), and Petros Markaris for Lixiprothesma dania. Furthermore, Arnaud Leparmentier has won in the essay category for Ces Français fossoyeurs de l’euro.

Classic and contemporary authors from Catalonia, writing in Catalan or in Spanish, are one of the main attractions of this year’s Salon du Livre in Paris, which is one of the main book fairs internationally. Running from Friday the 22nd to Monday the 25th of March in the French capital, this year the book fair has Barcelona as its guest city under the title ‘Barcelona, ville des prodiges’. The Institut Ramon Llull, the public body in charge of promoting Catalan culture abroad, is organising the presence of Catalan literature at the fair. During the first day, the visitors were mainly interested in Eduardo Mendoza, Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Josep Pla, who wrote ‘The Grey Notebook’ which has just been translated into French.