We come to one of the greatest stylists of current literature in Spanish. A narrator who, from the moment he took off, made it clear that he was coming to become a reference in that literature that baffles critics, capable of adjusting to what is popular but also loaded with tropes and cultisms everywhere. Something like a reflection of Perez Reverte in Barcelona. And since Don Arturo was born in Cartagena, they could be combined in Mediterranean Literature, if I may be allowed. A literature mixed by nature that is capable of transmuting between genres with agility and ingenuity.
One of the last books of Eduardo Mendoza, The beard of the prophet, turned out to be an exercise in introspection by the famous author towards his childhood and that partly traumatic transition that we all go through until adulthood. It was a book halfway between the author's reality and fiction, the typical book that a distinguished author writes for pure pleasure. I mention it because in that I don't know what to look for the writer's motives, we can draw on this work if we have already reached that point of mythologization of the author that pushes us to know more about his creative gift...
Because Eduardo Mendoza has given us so many good reading moments since the 70s… But if you visit this blog frequently, you'll already know what it's about, to raise that podium where I can place my three favorites, the small ranking of glory of every author who passes through this space.
Recommended novels by Eduardo Mendoza
The verdict on the Savolta case
Sometimes an author breaks in with his debut and ends up magnetizing huge numbers of readers eager for new interesting pens.
That was what happened with this novel. In a period of political neutrality (Barcelona 1917-1919), an arms manufacturing company doomed to economic disaster due to labor conflicts is the backdrop for the story of Javier Miranda, the protagonist and narrator of the events.
The Catalan industrialist Savolta, owner of that business that sold arms to the allies during the First World War, is assassinated. Humor, irony, the richness of nuances and experiences, parody and satire, the pastiche of popular subliterature, the recovery of the narrative tradition from the Byzantine novel, the picaresque and chivalric books to the modern detective story, turn this novel into an intelligent and funny tragicomedy, which placed Eduardo Mendoza among the most outstanding narrators of the last decades.
Tiff cats. Madrid 1936
With this great novel, Mendoza reached the Planeta 2010 award. In these times when all awards are questioned, sometimes a kind of justice is imposed from time to time.
An Englishman named Anthony Whitelands arrives aboard a train in convulsive Madrid in the spring of 1936. He must authenticate an unknown painting, belonging to a friend of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, whose economic value may be decisive in favoring a crucial political change in the History of Spain. Turbulent love affairs with women of different social classes distract the art critic without giving him time to calibrate how his persecutors are multiplying: policemen, diplomats, politicians and spies, in an atmosphere of conspiracy and riots.
Eduardo Mendoza's exceptional narrative skills perfectly combine the seriousness of the events narrated with the very subtle presence of his well-known sense of humor, since every tragedy is also part of human comedy.
The last journey of Horacio Dos
In my vague dreams as a writer, I always thought about being able to publish a novel in installments. This modality has a romantic I don't know. Eduardo Mendoza had to think of the readers who were waiting for the newspaper El País to leave to put everything aside until they reached the new chapter. Interesting proposal that also ended up materialized in a final book.
Between this undeniable romantic point and its certain aspect of science fiction, I wanted to place this novel on its podium. Commander Horacio Dos has been assigned an uncertain mission in view of his incompetence and impudence.
As the leader of a bizarre expedition, you will plow through space in extremely precarious conditions alongside your ship's peculiar passengers - the Criminals, the Wayward Women and the Improvident Elders. On this journey, which will bring countless adventures in store for them, there will be secret paternity and affiliations, courtly shows that hide a shabby and chipped reality, struggles to survive from scoundrels and hustlers, and much fright and surprise.A futuristic tale? A satirical allegory? A genre novel? None of these three things in isolation, and at the same time all of them: The last journey by Horacio Two, the new novel by Eduardo Mendoza.
A hilarious and very wise fable that participates in irony, parody, the serial and the picaresque and that, in a sidereal journey, leads us to discover our own condition behind a gallery of very human masks.
It is said. These are for me those three essential novels by Eduardo Mendoza. If you have something to object, visit official spaces 😛
Other recommended books by Eduardo Mendoza
Three enigmas for the Organization
Barcelona as the epicenter of secret official organizations does not catch us so off guard in these times of processes, alternative governments and so on. I say it like this, with a certain humor to tune in with the also hilarious background of the novel itself. And the underworlds created between official offices and others can also end up being a kind of underworld version of the Marx Brothers' cabin.
Barcelona, spring 2022. The members of a secret government organization face the very dangerous investigation of three cases that may or may not be related to each other: the appearance of a lifeless body in a hotel on Las Ramblas, the disappearance of a British millionaire on his yacht and the unique finances of Conservas Fernández.
Created in the midst of Franco's regime and lost in the limbo of the institutional bureaucracy of the democratic system, the Organization survives with economic difficulties and within the limits of the law, with a small staff of heterogeneous, extravagant and ill-advised characters. Between suspense and laughter, the reader must join this crazy group if he wants to solve the three enigmas of this exciting puzzle.
Eduardo Mendoza delivers his best and funniest adventure to date. And he does it with nine secret agents in a detective novel that updates the classics of the genre, and in which the reader will find the unmistakable narrative voice, the brilliant sense of humor, the social satire and the comedy that characterize one of the best authors of the Spanish language.
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