Thirty essential books to read in 2022

Narrative in Spanish

one. Love song. Carlos Zanón (Salamander)

A marching band meets again for a decadent summer tour of vacation spots, playing songs from the 1980s.

two. purple. Isabel Allende (Plaza and Janés)

The story of the protagonist throughout one hundred years, those that go from the Spanish flu epidemic that in 1920 shook her native country in South America to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

3. Bluebeard’s castle. Javier Cercas (Tusquets)

Third installment of the Melchor Marín series, who has left the Mossos d’Esquadra and works as a librarian in Gandesa. You will have to face the disappearance of your daughter.

Four. The book of all loves. Agustín Fernández Mallo (Seix Barral)

Philosophical novel about love, set in present-day Venice. As humanity heads towards collapse, a couple will play a decisive role in the transition to a new world.

5. Purity. Juan Ramón Jiménez (Chair)

Book that the Spanish poet and Nobel laureate wrote in Moguer in 1912 and that had not been published to date.

Narrative in Catalan

6. The monastery of Saint Helena. Albert Sánchez Piñol (The Bell)

Isolated Napoleon on the island of Saint Helena, Chateaubriand, love, culture, power. New novel from a long-awaited author.

7. The muses. Jordi Cussà (Comanegra)

Cussà’s posthumous novel is a last vital impulse with references ranging from Ramon Llull to Pink Floyd, Shakespeare or Camille Claudel.

8. Incarnations. Biel Mesquida (LaBreu)

One hundred short stories by a teacher of the word that show a reality often hidden before our very eyes.

9. Mammoth. Eva Baltasar (Club Editor)

The last part of Baltasar’s trilogy shows an archaic woman trapped in modern life and who leaves the city to go to an isolated house.

10. Sucamulla. Magí Camps (Univers)

A set of stories with the adventures and misadventures between love affairs and sexual characters who could be our best friends or neighbors, but whose tastes we know less than we think.

Translated narrative

eleven. Silverview project. John Le Carré (Planeta / Edicions 62)

Posthumous novel by the master of espionage narrative, in which the story of a bookseller in a small town addresses how spies are treated after their retirement or death.

12. The nights of the plague. Orhan Pamuk (Random House)

The Turkish Nobel Prize winner imagines a bubonic plague pandemic reaching a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century.

13. Twilight of the world. Werner Herzog (Blackie Books)

Novelistic debut by the German filmmaker, with the story of Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese soldier who remained hidden in the jungle for 29 years without knowing that the World War had ended.

14. Thirst. Amélie Nothomb (Anagram)

The author gives voice to Jesus Christ, who, just before his crucifixion, recalls aspects of his life, such as his sexual relations with Mary Magdalene.

fifteen. Mrs. March. Virginia Feito (Lumen)

A phenomenon novel in the US, the work of a woman from Madrid who writes in English. A woman becomes suspicious of the fictional plots that her novelist husband writes. Psychological terror and New York customs.

Rehearsal

16. Icon-classical music. History of the music of the 20th century. Pau Riba (Males Herbes)

Written from the invention of electricity, Riba offers a history of music from the unique perspective of a pioneer.

17. Beat her by. Life of Gabriel Ferrater. Jordi Amat (Editions 62)

On the poet’s centenary, Amat presents a new biography.

18. Carmen Balcells, word smuggler. Carme Riera (Debate / Rosa dels Vents)

Authorized biography of the literary agent who changed the rules of the game in the Spanish edition.

19. The new Barnum. Alessandro Baricco (Anagram)

Small texts by the Italian writer about the current world. The title alludes to the businessman PTBarnum, creator of the freak shows: Baricco sees culture today as a multi-track circus.

twenty. Leaders of culture. Talia Lavin (Captain Swing)

The American infiltrates the dark web of white supremacism and shows us the horror of contemporary hatred.

Comic

twenty-one. The hunting accident. Carlson and Blair (Planet Comic)

Best album in Angouleme. The real redemption journey of Matt Rizzo, a criminal who was left blind and raised in jail by his cellmate, Nathan Leopold, of the murderous duo Leopold & Loeb.

22. The mistake. Carlos Spottorno and Guillermo Abril (Astiberri)

Reporters return with their mix of photobook and graphic novel in La falla, about South Tyrol, which Italy took from Austria and is the richest region in the EU.

23. Gentlemind. Juan Díaz Canales, Teresa Valero and Antonio Lapone (Norma)

Set in 1950s New York, a young woman inherits a men’s magazine and turns it against machismo. Three decades of American dream in feminine.

24. George sprott. Seth (Salamander)

A life in all its mess, revelations and misunderstandings narrated by the author of the gigantic Clyde Fans.

25. I am still alive. Roberto Saviano and Asaf Hanuka (Reservoir books)

Saviano and his life in hiding in a graphic novel.

26. The truth department. J. Tynion and M. Simmonds (Norma)

A US department investigates conspiracies in a world where if many believe in one it becomes real.

27. Five thousand kilometers per second. Manuele Fior (Salamander)

Lucia and Piero’s love over the years in which they need to learn, accompanied and alone. A reflection on love that was Angouleme’s best album.

28. The bridge of the arts. Catherine Meurisse (Impedimenta)

A humorous look at the relationship between literature and art: from Proust and Vermeer to Zola and Cézanne or Apollinaire and Picasso.

29. Herb. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (Reservoir books)

True story of Lee Ok-Sun, a Korean woman who was a Japanese sex slave during World War II.

30. My beautiful vampire. Katie Skelly (Sapristi)

Halfway between Barbarella and Bardot, set in an idealized sixties, Clover dreams of the girl she was one before she was turned into a vampire.