The 20 best books of 2023

After Solà Hernan DiazAn Argentinian living in the United States, who is the latest sensation of North American literature with his work ‘Fortuna’ (Pulitzer) and who has one of his child prodigies, Bret Easton Ellis. They don’t let the Chileans down Benjamin LabatuNot even Catalan Laura Fernandez, staying on the crest of the wave, just like the British Maggie O’Farrell.

ListFrom least to most votes:

‘Bad habit’

Alana S. Goalkeeper. Six Barrels

Alana S. Portero, who also explores a difficult identity and social portrait of a marginal neighborhood of Madrid in the 80s, goes beyond the confessional portrait with her first book, managing to create good literature with no small amount of poetic baggage. Subject? How did the boy known as Alejandro become Alana?

‘I won’t watch you die’

Antonio Muñoz Molina. Six Barrels

A man and a woman. The gray Spain of the immediate postwar period gave way to the then-shiny United States, and that’s where it stayed. Two different stories, two ways of handling the memories of a single love perceived as heads and tails of the same coin.

‘The Rhythm of Harlem’

Colson Whitehead. random house

This double Pulitzer Prize-winning film, which stars an ordinary man caught in an extraordinary adventure as the protagonist, also reveals a brilliant crime case with a social backdrop that reads like a passionate love letter to Harlem.

‘Candy House’

Jennifer Egan. Salamander

Continuing the formal originality he has already demonstrated with the extraordinary ‘Time Is a Scoundrel’, the North American author creates a network of intersecting stories that he weaves thanks to an application where everyone can share their memories. A welcome challenge for the reader and a complex x-ray of our world.

‘Astronauts’

Laura Ferrero. alfaguara

Based on her own story as the daughter of a divorced family, Ferrero makes a literary reconstruction of her family, taking as a starting point the only photograph in which she appears with her parents as a child, which her mother did not destroy. The work was difficult.

‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’ / ‘Demà, i demà i demà’

Gabrielle Zevin. DNA / Periscope

This instant success is relatable today, and even those who are not video game fans find it in their hearts. The story of two children who meet at an arcade machine in a hospital and meet again as programming students passionate about video game design makes us addictive viewers of their relationship.

‘The Books of Jacob’

Olga Tokarczuk. anagram

Polish Nobel Prize winner uses stories from the past to talk about the present. In this novel of more than a thousand pages, with its tree-like plot, the adventures of the Jew Frank Jacob, a real character who declared himself the new Messiah in the 18th century, are told.

‘Storms’

Georgi Gospodinov. Fulgencio Pimentel

This year’s international Booker prize was awarded to this respected Bulgarian writer, who has crafted a masterful tale about our fear of the future and the danger of nostalgia. A psychiatrist sets up a series of clinics across Europe where you can live in your favorite decade.

‘Lessons’ / ‘Lliçons’

Ian McEwan. anagram

A thoroughly masterful McEwan uses an intimate story filled with autobiographical elements to recount eight decades of European history and reflect on how major events shape our lives.

‘Contents’

Carlo Padial. Blackie Books

Chronicling the rise and fall of one of the Spanish start-ups that flourished during the years of the new digital media bubble, behind the surface of comic satire emerges an insightful portrait of a generation marked by insecurity.

‘It will be three o’clock’

Exhibition Pàmies. Cream Squares

The passage of time, the author’s ego, and memory parade through these ten stories, with autobiographical overtones and subterranean connections subtly, subtly connecting them. Another taste from Pàmies, which, as always, manages to take the ordinary to the sensational.

‘Portrait of a Married’ / ‘Portrait of a Marriage’

Maggie O’Farrell. Asteroid Books / L’Altra

After captivating half the world with ‘Hamnet’, a family chronicle buried in Shakespeare’s history, O’Farrell returns with a novel that rescues the figure of Lucrezia de Medici (Lucre to readers), who died under strange circumstances at the age of 15.

‘The abyss of oblivion’

Paco Roca. astiberri

Since ‘Arrugas’ (2008), Paco Roca has established himself as one of the best in comics. He demonstrates this once again in this unmissable memorial, alongside journalist Rodrigo Terrasa, blaming the oblivion that still buries those shot by the Franco regime in graves without exhuming them.

‘Ladies, gentlemen and planets’

Laura Fernandez. random house

Dear masters of the story, Robert Coover and Stephen King, will applaud this collection of stories, which includes an introduction to each with haunting detail about their insights. A privileged window into Fernández’s inner life, into an expanding universe.

‘MANIAC’

Benjamin Labatut. anagram

A great book and a great warning to humanity who feels how the future has become an out of control horse thanks to science. How the mind’s dream creates monsters and how they adopt the appearance and forms of Artificial Intelligence.

‘Free’

Read Ypi. anagram

A memoir written like the best book in literature. Albanian Ypi, who is today a professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics, talks about his childhood, when he believed he lived in the best country in the world, and how his statues and beliefs were destroyed when he was 11 years old.

‘Demolition’

Bret Easton Ellis. random house

On his way to turning 60, the former child prodigy of North American literature and leader of Generation

‘Monica’ / ‘Monica’

Daniel Clowes. Fulgencio Pimentel / Finestress

The comic reaches the heights of postmodern fiction with ‘Monica’ by Daniel Clowes (Chicago, 1961). The character that gives the work its name searches for his mother (and himself) through a fragmented structure and many winding paths in both time and plot. The author uses cultural references for go-go and mixes genres just like a bartender mixes liquors in elegance. All these tricks add without detracting from a narrative that progresses like a hypnotism session. Clowes is known not to be too fond of the concept of comics, and here he seems to take a few swipes at it based on the fact that the nine episodes of ‘Monica’ operate like many other comics. The author’s radical commitment to imagination (despite the story’s strong ties to his own life) contrasts with the hegemony of autofiction, social commentary, and memory in current adult comics, and his sense of play also contrasts with the prevailing seriousness of the medium. A work that is pampered to the smallest detail, fascinating and demanding the return of the reader.- RAMON VENDRELL

‘Luck’

Hernan Diaz. Anagram (Spanish and Catalan)

It’s a perfect narrative ticking mechanism in which four different stories are cleverly linked together, complementing and also modifying what has been told before, each with a different narrator and a different tone that transforms and plays with the reader’s perceptions. On the one hand, it can be said to be a historical chronicle of the consolidation of capitalism in the vibrant New York of the 20s and 30s as we know it today, but it is also a reflection of our perception of reality and its counterpart. A fictional story consisting of two stories written by the protagonist businessman’s secretary and his wife. What the reader encounters is a fascinating game of masks: when one falls, we find a new mask, not quite knowing whether it is real or not.

Hernán Díaz, an Argentinian living in the United States, has become the latest sensation of North American literature with this novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize this year. – ELENA HEVIA

‘Et vaig donar els ulls’ / ‘I gave you eyes and you looked into the darkness’

Irene Sola. anagram

Irene Solà was successful and emerged as one of the sensations of 2019 after winning the Premi Llibres Anagrama with her polyphonic ‘Canto jo i la muntanya balla’, which made her a bestseller in both Catalan and Spanish. It was difficult to maintain excellence without repeating yourself and giving up your own narrative voice, but the author of Malla (Osona) managed to do it and this 2023 with ‘Et vaig donar ulls’ once again tops the list of the best book of the year. I vas mira les tenebres’. A novel is about women, about dead and living women, about their ghosts, about darkness, which for Solà can be spaces of freedom, magic, pleasure and irreverence that there is no need to fear. It is a story that takes place in the same place, in an isolated house in the Guilleries mountains (the region where the Catalan author was born) and in a single day, and over time, it leads to a deal made with the devil in the world of wolves. bandits, maquis and curses. With these mats and the rich use of language that is the hallmark of the house, Solà reflects on memory and oblivion, making the reader believe in the incredible. – ANNA ABELLA

Critics, journalists and columnists: Anna Abella, Ernest Alós, Carol Álvarez, Ricardo Baixeras, Leticia Blanco, Eduardo Bravo, Quim Casas, Juan Cruz, Jacobo de Arce, Desirée de Fez, Laura Fernández, Josep Maria Fonalleras, Valèria Gaillard, Javier García Rodríguez, Elena Hevia, Anna Maria Iglesia, Salvador Macip, Marta Marne, Inés Martín Rodrigo, Joel Mercè, Malcom Otero Barral, Miqui Otero, Elena Pita, Antonio Puente, Jordi Puntí, Sergi Sánchez, José A. Serrano, Rosa Ribas, Àlex Sàlmon, Rafael Tapounet, Ramon Vendrell. Libraries: La Central (Marta Ramoneda), Documenta (Èric del Arco), Gigamesh (Antonio Torrubia), Laie (Lluís Morral), Llibrería Saltamartí, Llibreria 22 (Guillem Terribas)