Barcelona Noir

by Adriana V. López (Editor), Carmen Ospina (Editor), Achy Obejas (Translator)

Overview

Spanish and Catalan writers enter boldly and unapologetically into the Akashic Noir Series arena.

“The 14 stories in Akashic’s Barcelona volume hew closely to the bleak spirit of the noir genre, whether reaching back to the 1920s [. . . ] or chronicling chaotic immigrant-infused present-day Barcelona.” —Publishers Weekly

“Each [contributor] presents his or her own personal picture of the city, and as a whole, the anthology projects a many-hued sense of place. As portrayed here, Barcelona is a city that looks different from every angle.” —Booklist

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Brand-new stories by: Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Imma Monsó, Santiago Roncagliolo, Francisco González Ledesma, Valerie Miles, David Barba, Isabel Franc, Lolita Bosch, Eric Taylor-Aragón, Antonia Cortijos, Cristina Fallarás, Raúl Argemí, Teresa Solana, and Andreu Martín

From the introduction by Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina:

“Its physical beauty alone, surrounded by mountains with a view of the sea, was cause enough for architect Antoni Gaudí to raise his version of Candy Land upon its soil; a daily impetus for the city’s mimes and living statues to claim a spot along Las Ramblas and transform it into their stage. But don’t be fooled: Barcelona, with all its illustrious color and exterior fineness, hasn’t always been able to curb the darker yearnings of its Hyde to its Jekyll. Blame it on a bubbling, repressive concoction made with a pinch of Church, a touch of Crown, and a large dose of General Francisco Franco to stir up the insides of its very independent and anarchic Catalonian spirit. One that has allowed it to conserve its own language and modus operandi from the rest of Spain, and that has always attracted the vanguard to create under the sereneness of its palm trees and Mediterranean light . . .

"Repression, vice, immigration . . . the fourteen stories within will divert your eyes from Barcelona’s lively Ramblas and Gaudi spires, opening them onto the city’s tainted side. One that will never appear in any recommended walking tour.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936070954
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	04/19/2011
Series:	Akashic Noir Series
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ was the founding editor of Criticas magazine and is the coeditor of Barcelona Noir. Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and she divides her time between New York and Madrid.

CARMEN OSPINA directs the digital program at Random House Mondadori in Barcelona. She is the coeditor of Barcelona Noir.

Achy Obejas is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ruins, Days of Awe, and three other books of fiction. She edited and translated (into English) the anthology Havana Noir, and has since translated Junot Diaz, Rita Indiana, Wendy Guerra, and many others. In 2014, she was awarded a USA Ford Fellowship for her writing and translation. The Tower of the Antilles, a short story collection, is her latest work.

Read an Excerpt

Barcelona Noir

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Akashic Books

Copyright © 2011 Akashic Books
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936070-95-4

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Introduction

Bloody Ramblings

Its physical beauty alone, surrounded by mountains with a view of the sea, was cause enough for architect Antoni Gaudí to raise his version of Candy Land upon its soil; a daily impetus for the city's mimes and living statues to claim a spot along Las Ramblas and transform it into their stage.

But don't be fooled: Barcelona, with all its illustrious color and exterior fineness, hasn't always been able to curb the darker yearnings of its Hyde to its Jekyll. Blame it on a bubbling, repressive concoction made with a pinch of Church, a touch of Crown, and a large dose of General Francisco Franco to stir up the insides of its very independent and anarchic Catalonian spirit. One that has allowed it to conserve its own language and modus operandi from the rest of Spain, and that has always attracted the vanguard to create under the sereneness of its palm trees and Mediterranean light.

It may be hard to imagine, but Barcelona, presumably named after the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca in third century B.C., was once trapped behind the shadows of Roman walls, hidden within the largest concentrated labyrinth of Gothic architecture in all of Europe. Hundreds of years later, the thriving port city would open itself up to commerce, its industrial age, and with it came immigrants, workers, revolution, and vice. Then the city would endure the bloodshed of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), thirty-five years of Franco's iron fist, and, when that was finally over, its cobblestoned streets became breeding grounds of resentment.

If noir is the genre most apt to expressing unease and malice within a society, it took awhile for Barcelona to feel safe to do so. In fact, Spain didn't produce its first novela negra, with a police character and crimes of passion, until 1853, with the publication of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón's El Clavo (The Nail). But bear in mind that Spain, in general, was not the easiest of places to be an author. Those brave or crazy enough to question the orthodoxy through their writing faced torture, imprisonment, or worse: death. Just remember Federico García Lorca's tragic fate at the hands of the Nationalists in 1936.

Over time, more crime fiction was published, though it still faced heavy censorship. Francisco García Pavón's novelas policíacas featuring the police chief Manuel González, a.k.a. Plinio, garnered a following in the 1950s and were eventually adapted into a popular television series. This Plinio character—who could be described as a man of few words, with his right hip attached to his gun and a cigarette appended to the side of his mouth—was without a doubt a pioneer of his time. But a true noir fan would rate the series tepid in comparison to the brutality of Franco's very real hit men; the violence portrayed, well, a mere stroll in the park.

It wasn't until Franco's death in 1975 that grittier tales began pounding themselves out upon typewriter keys soiled with absinthe and cigarette ash. The bans had been lifted and a new era had emerged. But instead of your classic whodunit style of noir that was popular in the U.K., Spain's take on the genre stung with social criticism. Thanks to memorable protagonists created by Catalan novelists such as Francisco "Paco" González Ledesma, with his jaded inspector Ricardo Méndez (featured in this collection), as well as the great and late Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, with his bon vivant detective Pepe Carvalho, Barcelona began to be depicted as it actually was: a city riddled with violence, endemic corruption, and lack of social mobility.

While some of the stories in Barcelona Noir still capture a certain air of this former era, a strange if more sadistic mood lurks through this small postindustrial city of today. Smeared with the pleasure-seeking sheen of its rampant tourist industry, combined with a constant stream of immigration from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and with the ever-growing tensions of Catalonian nationalism, the city has spawned a fresh new batch of resentments and culture clashes. Enter the underground world of Raúl Argemí's "The Slender Charm of Chinese Women," where drugs, xenophobia, and people trafficking manage to remain hidden in the city's darkest corners. In Eric Taylor-Aragón's "Epiphany," two heartbroken outsiders meet at a bar and make a horrid attempt to escape their existential pain together, while in Jordi Sierra i Fabra's "A High-End Neighborhood," the city's rich outright torture the foreign help.

There are portraits here of Catalans struggling with their own sense of identity, feeling suffocated in a conservative society, as depicted in Imma Monsó's mind-bending retail story "The Customer Is Always Right"; in Teresa Solana's "The Offering," where a respectable clinic becomes the setting for surgical terror; and in tiny clues scattered throughout Lolita Bosch's scandalous tale of crosscontinental hate crimes. This repression is also expressed in Santiago Roncagliolo's "The Predator," where a group of officemates partake in Carnival night's fun by putting on masks so they can take their real-life ones off; and in Valerie Miles's "Bringing Down the Moon," when the magic surrounding Saint John's festival becomes the perfect excuse to commit murder.

In the meantime, plots take us back in time in search of ghosts of the Second World War, such as in "Brawner's Shadows" by Antonia Cortijos. And even further back, to the era of the gangster anarchists running scared through the Ciutat Vella, in Andreu Martín's "The Law of Escape." Today, the detectives and the pursuers aren't necessarily men anymore either; they can be lesbian and pregnant, and penned by respected writers in the genre such as Isabel Franc and Cristina Fallarás.

In fact, noir is so entrenched in Barcelona's pop culture and street lore that a tourist can easily partake in it browsing the shelves of the Negra y Criminal bookstore in the Barceloneta, at its yearly BCNegra literary festival, or visiting the plaza between Sant Rafael Street and the Rambla del Raval dedicated to the memory of Vázquez Montalbán—the aforementioned creator of beloved character Pepe Carvalho, an ex-Communist detective and food connoisseur who, accompanied by his prostitute girlfriend, baptized the Raval district's watering holes and best restaurants. There are fine-dining tour-guide musts, such as the Boquería Market's Pinotxo bar or Casa Leopoldo, where if you tell your waiter, "Pepe Carvalho recommended I come, so serve me whatever you wish," you're bound for a killer meal you'll never forget. If you are seeking a hard-to-swallow serving of Catalonia's culinary snobbism, we recommend your next course be David Barba's "Sweet Croquette," a fascinating journey into one man's obsession with the star chef Ferran Adrià.

Repression, vice, immigration ... the fourteen stories within will divert your eyes from Barcelona's lively Ramblas and Gaudí spires, opening them onto the city's tainted side. One that will never appear in any recommended walking tour.

Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina Barcelona, Spain January 2011

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Barcelona Noir Copyright © 2011 by Akashic Books. Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Follow Me If You Can
“The Law of Escape” by Andreu Martín (Villa Olímpica)
“Brawner’s Shadows” by Antonia Cortijos (El Born)
“The Predator” by Santiago Roncagliolo (Barri Gòtic)
“The Enigma of Her Voice” by Isabel Franc (Poble Nou)
“In This World, and at the Time Mercedes Died” by Lolita Bosch (Sant Gervasi)

Part II: Sheltered Lives, Secret Crimes
“Sweet Croquette” by David Barba (El Carmel)
“The Offering” by Teresa Solana (Sant Antoni)
“A High-End Neighborhood” by Jordi Sierra I Fabra (Turó Parc)
“The Customer is Always Right” by Imma Monsó (L’Eixample)

Part III: Days of Wine (White Lines) and Roses
“Epiphany” by Eric Taylor-Aragón (Barceloneta)
“The Story of a Scar” by Cristina Fallarás (Nou Barris)
“Bringing Down the Moon” by Valerie Miles (Gàcia)
“The Slender Charm of Chinese Women” by Raúl Argemí (Montjuic)
“The Police Inspector Who Loved Books” by Francisco González Ledesma (El Raval)

Editorial Reviews

The 14 stories in Akashic's Barcelona volume hew closely to the bleak spirit of the noir genre, whether reaching back to the 1920s, as Andreu Martín does in the chilling "The Law of Escape," or chronicling chaotic immigrant-infused present-day Barcelona, as Raúl Argemí does in "The Slender Charm of Chinese Women." Standouts include Eric Taylor-Aragón's "Epiphany," with its shocking ending; David Barba's ghoulish "Sweet Croquette"; Teresa Solana's "The Offering," with its echoes of Edgar Allan Poe (and one of two stories originally written in Catalan); and Jordi Sierra i Fabra's "A High-End Neighborhood," in which a Filipino servant suffers the whims of a wealthy couple and their spoiled children. Francisco González Ledesma's brief "The Police Inspector Who Loved Books," about an old man with more books than he can read who's going blind and doesn't want to live if he can't read anymore, provides a bittersweet ending. (May)

Publishers Weekly