Books in english
The spider and me
Prize Neira Vilas 2009 to the best children books
Translation: Jon Brokenbrow
Photos: Manuel G. Vicente
Kalandraka, 2009
2nd edition
One bright day, all of a sudden, a fat, ugly spider… jumped out of the sky and landed on my body. First of all, the cheeky thing explored my big toe, as plump as a kiwi. tangerine. Then, it climbed up to my ankles, as bumpy as the skin of a tangerine.
Nobody
Translation: Jonathan Dunne
Small Stations Press, 2021
Nobody by contemporary Galician writer Fran Alonso is a book of ten short stories about noise (and silence), the disjunction in our lives between what we really feel and our public persona. In these stories, a man is bombarded by the noise from his neighbours and goes upstairs to have it out with the woman who is always shouting at her children, with unforeseen consequences. An Old Man lives in a semi-deserted city; his only way to mark the passing of time is to make a cut in his hand every day – that is, until he spots an Old Woman on the balcony opposite who is constantly knitting. Sick and tired of noise in the city, a woman endeavours to change her lifestyle by moving to a house on a cliff. Writer finishes a novel and leaves it on a lectern in the lobby for his neighbours to read. S. Lonely, who relies heavily on technological gadgets to keep himself entertained and prefers not to go outside, is so bored during the holidays that he decides to go on a trip… Every story in this book analyzes the relationship between the individual and society, the individualism of urban living versus the community obligations of the village, forcing the reader to reconsider the kind of world they live in and the sincerity of their relationships. This is a book for our times that draws on the powerful story-telling tradition of Galician literature.