Four years have passed since Irene Solà first captivated readers with a multilingual bestseller. In 2019 she topped the critics’ ranking with Canto jo i la muntanya balla, and in 2023 she returns with Et vaig donar ulls i vas mira les tenebres, a Catalan and Spanish edition that confirms her continued prominence in contemporary letters. The annual verdict from critics, reporters, and booksellers within the Prensa Ibérica group places Solà again at the pinnacle, joined by a diverse lineup that includes graphic novels, translated works, and novels from North American and European voices. The year’s list highlights the breadth of modern storytelling, featuring stellar debuts and established voices alike, with Daniel Clowes and Paco Roca making strong showings in the top ranks.
Across the Atlantic, the North American literary scene is also in focus. An Argentinian author living in the United States has captured significant attention with Fortuna, a Pulitzer Prize winner that speaks to the current moment in North American literature. The same year also brings renewed interest in figures such as Bret Easton Ellis, whose work continues to provoke discussion in Canadian and American reading communities. The list maintains a balance, ensuring continued visibility for Chilean, Catalan, and British writers who resonate with readers across the Americas.
List From least to most votes:
Bad habit
Alana S. Six Barrels
Alana S. Portero explores identity through a demanding social portrait set in a marginalized Madrid neighborhood during the 1980s. The narrative shifts from confessional modes to a broader literary painting, mining questions of selfhood through a young character whose journey from boy to girl intersects with culture, history, and memory.
I won’t watch you die
Antonio Muñoz Molina. Six Barrels
A man and a woman inhabit a Spain transitioning from postwar gray to the glitter of the distant United States. Two stories unfold in tandem, offering complementary reflections on memory and love drawn as heads and tails of the same coin.
The Rhythm of Harlem
Colson Whitehead. Random House
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead crafts a grounded noir that doubles as a social panorama of Harlem. In a city that becomes a stage for both danger and idealism, the protagonist threads through a plot that binds crime, history, and belonging into one compelling arc.
Candy House
Jennifer Egan. Salamander
Continuing a trail of formal experimentation, Egan builds a network of interconnected stories centered on a digital platform that lets people share memories. The novel probes memory, technology, and ethics while challenging readers to track shifting perspectives across multiple lives.
Astronauts
Laura Ferrero. Alfaguara
Drawing from a personal family history, Ferrero reconstructs a life through a child’s eye and a single photograph not destroyed by a parent. The narrative delves into memory, lineage, and the emotional labor of keeping a family story intact under pressure.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin. DNA / Periscope
This instantly engaging novel follows two children who meet at an arcade hospital unit and reconnect as programming students who shape video game culture. Readers are drawn into a modern romance about ambition, friendship, and the addictive pull of play.
The Books of Jacob
Olga Tokarczuk. Anagram
The Nobel laureate threads past and present through a vast, tree-like narrative. The life of the charismatic Jew Frank Jacob unfolds in an era of upheaval, as legends mix with historical testimony to explore belief, memory, and the search for belonging.
Storms
Georgi Gospodinov. Fulgencio Pimentel
A Bulgarian master crafts a meditation on fear of the future and the pull of nostalgia. A physician opens clinics across Europe where one can inhabit a preferred decade, blurring lines between diagnosis and longing.
Lessons / Lliçons
Ian McEwan. Anagrama
McEwan turns to intimate memory and eight decades of European history, using autobiographical texture to reflect on how major events leave their imprint on ordinary lives and choices across time.
Contents
Carlo Padial. Blackie Books
The rise and fall of a digital media startup sets the stage for a sharp, comic, and insightful portrait of a generation marked by digital hunger and insecurity, with a sly eye on the tech era that reshaped modern life.
It will be three o’clock
Exhibition Pàmies. Cream Squares
Ten stories weave time, ego, and memory into a compact, resonant arc. Autobiographical notes and subtle linkages connect the pieces, producing a fresh take on everyday moments turned sensational by imagination.
Portrait of a Married / Portrait of a Marriage
Maggie O’Farrell. Asteroid Books / L’Altra
Building on the momentum of Hamnet, a new family chronicle centers on Lucrezia de Medici, a life shadowed by mystery and the ache of lost time, told with the author’s trademark emotional clarity.
The abyss of oblivion
Paco Roca. Astiberri
Roca returns to the intimate, human scale of memory with a memorial that chronicles those buried in grave sites left unexhumed after Francoist repression, a work steeped in empathy and historical presence.
Ladies, gentlemen and planets
Laura Fernandez. Random House
A collection that invites comparison with masters of the short form, featuring introspective narratives and a voice that carves out its own orbit while paying homage to literary forebears who have shaped the form.
MANIAC
Benjamin Labatut. Anagram
A prophetic warning about the mind’s ability to conjure monsters through scientific imagination, this work blends speculative fiction with philosophical inquiry into the nature of intelligence and control.
Free
Read Ypi. Anagram
A memoir written with the cadence of a novel, it recounts a childhood in a country that felt like the best in the world at the time, and how belief and national identity were reshaped when reality intruded upon childhood certainty.
Demolition
Bret Easton Ellis. Random House
On the cusp of sixty, the author revisits the provocative energy of a literary career that has long tested boundaries and expectations, offering a candid appraisal of fame, memory, and cultural change.
Monica / Monica
Daniel Clowes. Fulgencio Pimentel / Finestress
A landmark in postmodern comics, the search for a mother and self unfolds through a fractured, time-shifting structure. Clowes deploys a playful, cinematic sensibility that challenges readers to track a deliberately restless narrative while honoring deep emotional stakes.
Luck
Hernán Díaz. Anagrama (Spanish and Catalan)
A mechanism of linked stories set in New York during the 1920s and 30s, the novel also examines reality and perception through shifting narrators. It is a multi-layered meditation on capitalism, memory, and the artifice of history that rewards careful reading.
Et vaig donar els ulls / I gave you eyes and you looked into the darkness
Irene Solà. Anagrama
Solà’s latest work continues a trajectory of poetic language and rich imagery. Set in the Guilleries mountains and a single day that unfolds across time, the novel imagines a world where women, ghosts, and memory intersect with danger and possibility. The author’s distinctive voice is on full display as memory, oblivion, and the world of wolves, bandits, and curses become a canvas for exploring female experience, resilience, and the stubborn hope that language can make sense of it all.
Credits for contributing to this list
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, Documenta, Gigamesh, Laie, Saltamartí, Llibreria 22. The same list is echoed in further notes and acknowledgments throughout the edition.