Uk Panel's Choice - Year 2016

Panels are usually formed by six industry experts, amongst which there are publishers, translators, critics, booksellers, and a permanent representative from the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT). Panellists change every edition to allow as many people as possible to be part of the project. The panel meets twice and decisions are based on their knowledge, experience and intuition, as well as on reader’s reports. Members of the panel take their decisions with total independence.

The 2016 Edition panel was formed by: Daniel Hahn (editor and translator), Gary McKeone (Literary consultor), Jane Harris (Bonnier Publishing/Hot Key Books), Kathlyn Crocker (Bookshop: Tales on Moon Lane), Madeleine O’Shea (Head of Zeus) and Richard Mansell (Exeter University). The following people have translated book summaries or/and written reports for this issue: Annie McDermott, Catherine Mansfield, Chris Moss, Christina MacSweeney, Isabelle Kaufeler, Jennifer Arnold, Judith Willis, Laura McGloughlin, Lindsey Ford, Lise Jones, Mara Faye Lethem, Margaret Jull Costa, Peter Bush and Suky Taylor.

A big thank you to all of them for their enthusiasm and invaluable contribution to the 2016 Edition of New Spanish Books

  • Azaría
    Azaría
    Azaría
    Author:
    Anabel Rodríguez
    Publisher: ediciones del serbal
    Azaría is a peaceful, untroubled mountain village, with white cobbled streets, isolated from the political unrest of a country governed by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. This peace is suddenly shattered by the mysterious killing of an elderly brother and sister: Cándido and Paquita Gutiérrez.
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  • Confesiones al psicoanalista
    Confessions to the Psychoanalyst
    Author:
    Izara Batres
    Publisher: Medium
    … A man who has a strange relationship with cinema, a rich man bored with his money, the mother of a dictator, a couple who love each other in a… peculiar way, and a maniac obsessed with fame are some of the characters making up Confessions to te Psychoanalyst. A brilliantly funny book which, with sharp wit and a sense of rhythm, parodies the effects of modern society and our lifestyles.
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  • DARK
    DARK
    DARK
    Author:
    EDGARDO COZARINSKY
    Publisher: TUSQUETS EDITORES, S.A.
    What strange impulse feeds the friendship between a teenager—a good student, the son parents with no connection to eccentricity, indifferent to his literary aspirations—with a man of no fixed abode who throws money of dubious origins about and introduces him into a world of completely new, risky, ever sordid experiences?
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  • De quin color són els besos?
    What Colour Are Kisses?
    De quin color són els besos?
    Author:
    Rocio Bonilla
    Publisher: Edicions Bromera, empresa editorial, S.L.U.
    Mónica — known to everyone as Minimoni — likes painting thousands things in colour: blue skies, penguins, gorillas… but she's never painted a kiss. Because… what colour is a kiss? Red like the tomato sauce for spaghetti? Maybe not, because that's the colour of anger… And what about green, like the crocodiles she loves so much? Hmm… definitely not!
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  • Distintas formas de mirar el agua
    Different Ways of Looking at Water
    Distintas formas de mirar el agua
    Author:
    Julio Llamazares
    Agent: R.D.C Agencia Literaria
    In a beautiful, desolate place, the death of a grandfather brings together all the members of a family. Beside the reservoir that swamped their home almost fifty years before, and where Domingo's ashes will lie for eternity, each member of the family silently reflects on their relationship with him and the others, and on how exile marked all their lives.
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  • El invierno que tomamos cartas en el asunto
    The Winter We Took Things Into Our Own Hands
    invierno
    Author:
    Ángeles Doñate
    Agent: Sandra Bruna Agencia Literaria S.L
    The Winter We Took Things Into Our Own Hands, literal translation but the Spanish title involves a play on words involving 'cartas' (letters) which are both a key feature of the book and part of the Spanish expression for taking things into your own hands.
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  • EL JOVEN MORIARTY (I): El misterio del Dodo
    Young Moriarty (I): The Mystery of the Dodo
    El joven Moriarty El misterio del dodo
    Author:
    Sofía Rhei
    Publisher: Nevsky Prospects S.L.
    Uncle Theodosius has returned from one of his journeys around the world and has brought back a most peculiar specimen: a dodo bird, which everyone believes to be extinct. The bad thing is that the poor creature has a lot of enemies, almost all of whom attend the welcome-home party held by James Moriarty's father in honour of the explorer.
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  • El Reino Secreto (de los hermanos Mozart)
    The Secret Kingdom (of the Mozart Siblings)
    El Reino Secreto
    Author:
    Sofía Rhei
    Publisher: Ediciones Diquesi
    Thirteen-year-old Narnel Mozart is the older sister of the brilliant composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Like any boy his age, he loves playing and mischief, and what he finds most difficult to understand is adults. He likes parties… but not the ones he's invited to, in courts and palaces. There, people look at him as if he's weird.
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  • HACHIKO
    Hachiko
    Author:
    Luís Prats Martínez
    Publisher: LA GALERA
    Professor Ueno buys a puppy for his daughter. The relationship between the Professor and Hachiko, the dog, soon turns into something special.. Each morning Hachiko accompanies Professor Ueno to the station and each afternoon he awaits his return at half past five. Every working day. Every month. Every year. A relationship has developed based on friendship and loyalty.
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  • La vida cuando era nuestra
    Life When It Was Ours
    Author:
    Marian Izaguirre
    Publisher: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial
    Lola lives a life filled with books and café conversations, languid siestas and projects for constructing a better Spain, but in 1936 the day comes when life is pure resistance.
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  • La vida sense la Sara Amat
    Life without Sara Amat
    Life without Sara Amat
    Author:
    Pep Puig
    Publisher: Raval Edicions S.L.
    Who now remembers Sara Amat? She was just thirteen when she disappeared one summer night and was never again heard from. There was a single news item the following day in the Diario de Terrassa, and a great deal of speculation and many rumours.
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  • Pasolini o La noche de las luciérnagas
    Pasolini or The Night of the Fireflies
    Pasolini o La noche de las luciérnagas
    Author:
    José Mª García López
    Publisher: Nocturna Ediciones SL
    On the night of the 1-2 November 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini was brutally murdered on the beach at Ostia. The public opinion of half of Europe was excited and the event lead to the conviction of a young man, although the forensic evidence suggested that there was more than one culprit.
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