Historical events or dystopias, family conflicts, loves and misfortunes run through the pages of these ten outstanding books translated into Spanish that have been published in 2020 and that have accompanied readers in the coming year.
“DON’T SAY ANYTHING,” by Patrick Radden Keefe.
An award-winning chronicle of the Northern Ireland conflict that begins with a incident in December 1972, when several hooded men kidnapped Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow with ten children in her care, in a Catholic neighborhood of Belfast. Everyone sensed that this was retaliation from the IRA, but no one dared to say so because of the terror prevailing in the hottest days of the conflict.
“OUR UNEXPECTED BROTHERS”, by Amin Maalouf.
Seeking in fiction the hope he does not find in reality, the Lebanese writer recounts in this novel a mysterious episode in which the world escapes a disaster and recovers the philosophy of ancient Greece.
“THE NICKEL BOYS,” by Colson Whitehead.
Based on the terrifying real case of a Florida (USA) reformatory that was in operation for more than a century and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, this novel tells the story of Elwood Curtis, a promising black teenager who, in the 1960s, ended up in the reformatory over a misunderstanding.
“EL REI PAGÈS”, by Andrea Camilleri.
One of the favorite works of the late Camilleri, written entirely in Sicilian as a tribute to the language and its different dialectal varieties and which explains how for six days, a humble farmer was king of a small Sicilian village.
“THE FLOWER,” by Mary Karr.
After “The Liars’ Club” (2017) and “Illuminated” (2019), this third novel by Mary Karr completes what is considered one of the best memories of American narrative of all time and that is a love letter to adolescence.
“ANY LOVE” by Jane Smiley.
20 years ago, the Kinsellas were, in appearance, an idyllic and happy family. Overnight, Rachel’s husband sold the house they lived in and took the five children abroad without counting her.
“THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS”, by Elena Ferrante.
X-ray of the secrets of a bourgeois family in Naples in the 90s, the latest novel about the growth and family of Ferran, a pseudonym of an Italian author whose identity remains a mystery.
“THE HOURS,” by Michael Cunningham.
Three women struggle between loneliness and love for beauty and life in three 20th-century eras with the thread of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway”.
“EL COLIBRÍ”, by Sandro Veronesi.
Deserving of the last Strega Prize, this novel tells the story of Marc and a series of misfortunes and blows to the fate he will face without losing heart.
“THE TERRANAUTES,” by TC Boyle.
Just arrived in the Arizona desert in 1994, The Terranautas, a group of eight scientists (four men and four women), volunteer, as part of a successful reality show broadcast worldwide, to confine under a glass dome that purports to be a prototype of a possible alien colony.