In 1551, King João III of Portugal gives Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. On the long and arduous journey from Lisbon to Vienna across the Alps, Solomon and his mahout Subhro become inseparable friends.

With loving detail, Saramago describes this incredible journey with his usual pinch of irony, showing how friendship and solidarity make life worth living even in the most dire situations. Taking historical facts as his starting point, The Elephant´s Journey (“A viagem do elefante”) tells the stories of those who have not found their way into the history books, and he does so with his very characteristic eye, recognising the greatness in the details and the details in the greatness.

Enhanced by João Amaral’s beautiful illustrations, this graphic novel is a feast for the eyes and the soul, and a homage to the Nobel Laureate’s novel.

Based on actual events, Schizo follows the trayectories of three families from different continents that have survived annihilation in their respective lands and converge in Miami around the unexplained death of an anti-torture activist at the height of GW Bush´s war on terror in 2005.

Nathan Moretti, whose parents fled the Holocaust and emigrated to America, falls in love with Nadia Mimouni, whose own family escaped a brutal colonial war in Algeria and was born in Buenos Aires – where a thir household, the Posadas-Suarez, experienced first-hand the atrocities of Argentina´s civil war in late seventies. Was Nathan´s friend´s untimely death a banal traffic accident or was it the premeditated murder of a potential whistleblower? And if there was foul play, who stands to benefit by his death?

Schizo is a political satire set againts the CIA´s post-9/11 torture program about the chasm between professed values and actual practice, colonial empires doubling as democracies, and the ethical contortions individuals sometimes go through so they can live with themselves.

35 years on from Pinochet’s putsch, the three former exiles Cacho, Lolo and Lucho meet again in Chile. By now they are The Shadow of What We Were (“La sombra de lo que fuimos”): pot-bellied, balding and grey-bearded. Their plan is finally to unearth a treasure the police have never tracked down: the loot from a famous bank robbery that took place in 1925, undertaken by a group of anarchists. Drinking and wallowing in memories of their old revolutionary days, they wait for the fourth man, who should know more about the money. But instead of him, a former friend shows up, telling an incredible story.

Affectionate, funny and with a good pinch of irony, this graphic novel tells the story of a group of tragic heroes who never lose their faith in humour – which is why they end up as winners.

Membrane (“Membrana”) is a highly original novel that puts a spectacular twist on the tradition of speculative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula K. LeGuin, Donna Haraway and Ted Chiang. Narrated by a complex artificial intelligence in the year 2100, it tells the secret history of the 21st century: how algorithms gradually took power and secretly built a monumental museum in the Amazon jungle to tell the story of how they became an empire. “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism”, said Walter Benjamin. The story we are reading, which takes the form of the catalogue of The 21st Century Museum, under which name the novel won the Barbastro Prize for Literature 2021, is no exception. To write it, Jorge Carrión – one of Spain’s most acclaimed and widely translated writers, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times – has invented a neo-language, somewhere between narrative, poetry and essay, which imagines how the artificial intelligences of the future will write. An experimental and philosophical novel that reads like a thriller. A great reflection on the tumultuous relationship between technology and humanity.

Winner of the prestigious Ciudad de Barbastro Prize, worth 15,000 euros.

Did the 21st century begin with the fall of the Twin Towers in New York or with the entry of a virus into a man’s body in Wuhan? Is SARS-CoV-2 the first cyborg pathogen? Are Netflix, Zoom and Amazon multinational pandemics? How can one represent the transformation of science fiction into everyday reality? The Viral (“Lo viral”) is, at the same time, a meticulous reconstruction of the first months of the coronavirus from personal experience, a fragmentary essay on digital virality, the memory of a quarantined library, an experiment in cultural criticism and a false but sincere diary that manages to keep the reader in permanent brain activity and throws up a series of essential questions about the future that awaits us.

Picking up where Bookshops: A Reader’s History left off, Against Amazon (“Contra Amazon”) explores the impact of new technologies on bookshops and libraries. Collecting Jorge Carrión’s essays on these vital cultural spaces, as well as interviews with the writers who love them. Jorge Carrión travels to the innovative libraries and bookstores of Seoul; in Naples and Capri he researches the history of the mythical house of Curzio Malaparte; he interviews booksellers and writers; he talks about books and cities with Alberto Manguel, Iain Sinclair, Luigi Amara and Han Kang; he interprets the libraries of Don Quixote and Captain Nemo, and pays homage to some of the world‘s most fascinating bookstores and libraries. Against Amazon is in equal parts a history of books and bookshops, a reader’s autobiography, a travelogue, a love letter – and, urgently, a manifesto against the corrosive pressures of modern-day capitalism.

In his new book Barcelona: Book of Passageways (“Barcelona. Libro de los pasajes”), Jorge Carrión invites us to stroll through the streets of Barcelona and especially its passageways, those elements of urban life that bring people together and contain hidden stories. The author wanders around the city, speaks with passers-by and the inhabitants of the passagaways. He rediscovers historical characters and stories that have contributed to the development of the city. Carrión tells us about Barcelona, but in reality he is talking about urban spaces all around the world, and the book is also in some ways a tribute to Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”.

In The Deceased (“Los difuntos”), Jorge Carrión tells the prequel to The Dead (“Los muertos”), set in a fictional 19th century New York City. In this society where technological progress reigns, “new ones” are enslaved in order to ensure the working of the steam machines. With time, they will climb the social ladder and become the “old ones”. In this scenario the philosophical ideals of Dionysos and Apollo materialize in the main character, who will battle against the decadence of progress and the oppression it generates. Jorge Carrión brilliantly narrates this tale about the search for identity and purpose set in a fictional world that is in many ways much like ours – from the alienation of the human being in a technological world, to the high price the “new ones” are willing to pay for the American dream.

Jorge Carrión’s book Bookshops (“Librerías”) is a survey of the history of bookstores all over the world, their relationships with writers and how they became the center pieces of culture and political resistance, making a trip through the history of the book trade from Ancient Rome to the 21st century. Nostalgic yet demystifying, this extraordinary book is the result of many readings, researches and visits to bookstores on the five continents, veering between cultural critique and travel chronicle. Librerías has come second in the prestigious Anagrama Award for Essays.

In his cleverly construed novel The Footprints (“Las huellas”), the author brings a number of essential topics like identity and human relationships together with moments in time and space, keeping the reader glued to the page. Reminiscent of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Las huellas features a suggestive plot and vivid characters that make us question the future of our planet.

First published in 2000, Sinful Capão (“Capão Pecado”) marked an era and became one of the most talked about works of marginal literature.

In Sinful Capão, lives are worth very little, almost nothing. Everything is always hanging by a thread. As Ferréz writes, “the future is further ahead, much further ahead”. So far ahead that it’s often too late.
Rael is a teenager who wants to get away from the atrocious environment of violence in which he grew up. A dedicated son, he endeavours to get a good job. But his destiny is about to change when he falls in love with Paula, his friend’s girlfriend.

This book, which has already won over legions of readers in Brazil and around the world with its brutal and relentless story, is now in its sixth revised edition, with an afterword by Marcelino Freire. By narrating the dark underbelly of an utterly unequal society, where machismo and cruelty dictate the rules, this novel reveals its overwhelming force and its power to provoke new reflections.

Practical Handbook of Hatred (“Manual prático do ódio”) was called “a punch in the stomach” by the critics. It tells the story of Régis, Lúcio Fé and other favela dwellers, who can’t wait to pull off the big heist that will finally make them rich. They don’t care about harming those they live alongside, creating a world full of hatred and violence. In this drastic yet captivating novel, Ferréz shows the darkest and dirtiest sides of life in the favela.

Ferréz’ novel God Went Out For Lunch (“Deus foi almoçar”) is about the apparently calm life of the middle-aged public official Calixto. When he is left by his wife and his daughter, it could be a turning point for him. Although unable to adapt to his new situation, he cannot decide to take a new step either and stays trapped in a life that from the bottom of his heart he is longing to change. With this realistic and well-observed novel, Ferréz takes a close look at the Brazilian middle class for the first time.

The most important writer from the so-called marginal literature of Brazil, Ferréz, from São Paulo, makes his debut in the infantile-juvenile genre with Emerald Dawn (“Amanhecer Esmeralda”). In a beautifully illustrated edition, the author tells how the daily life of Emerald, a black girl and resident of a poor community, is being altered by gestures of love that improve her self-esteem. According to Ferréz, the character was inspired by a child who attended his lectures and impressed him with a haughtiness comparable to the great African nobles.