oh!books literary agency
Journalism & Essay / October 2015
SUMMARY Why Things could Be Different 3 Dispatches from Honduras 4 The Basements of the World
5
Athens’ four seasons 6 Indians, blacks and other underisables
7
Hipsters as political problem 8 The Monster
9
Chronicles of the Mafia 10 The Vulture Funds Catalonia Affair
11
12
Sociophobia 13 Where is My Tribe?
14
The end of the middle classes
15
Selected backlist 16
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 2
Manuela Carmena This 71-year-old veteran human rights activist is the current major of Madrid. When she was young, she was a militant of the Communist Party and fought against Franco’s Regime. She was a member of the group of labour lawyers who, in 1977, suffered an attack from an ultra right commando, where five of her colleagues died. She has dedicated her life to defend human rights. In 2010, after retiring from the office of judge, she joined the Spanish social movements such as 15M and, in 2015, she led the candidacy Ahora Madrid, a coalition of leftists that includes Podemos, with which she won the city’s mayoral race, which meant the beginning of a new era of honest, cultured, polite and intelligent politicians.
The view of a woman who breaks all the schemes, who speaks with her own and clear voice about the problems of the our world and invites us to change it with optimism.
Why Things could Be Different Reflexions of a Judge
More than 12,000 copies sold!
Spain / 2014 / 286 pages / Memoirs Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectua), Argentina (Capital Intelectual), Korea (Green Knowledge Publishing)
Changes, one by one, mean little. However the accumulation of many small changes can give way to a different world. This is what judge Manuela Carmena tells us. In this book she offers us examples of what her fight against injustice, corruption and bureaucracy has been throughout her life. Small changes, such as refusing to use an official car and travelling by metro with her escort, to the astonishment of her judge colleagues, or proposing to the members of the Basque Country Government to use a bike in Vitoria, since she uses, herself, a bike as a means of transportation in the cities. She is a brave woman, committed to social justice, a lawyer since the 60’s (a time when women in Spain were socially and legally barely an object), who founded the first labour firms that did so much in the defence of workers. She is a brilliant woman and her words are full of wisdom. Find below links to The Guardian, Liberation, El País, as well as the complete press dossier, that includes several reviews in the main Spanish newspapers. Press dossier: http://www.udllibros.com/libro-por_que_las_cosas_pueden_ser_ diferentes_6%AAed-W640110005 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/spains-indignados-ada-colau-elections-mayorbarcelona http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2015/05/22/manuela-carmena-le-poids-des-alter-a-madrid_1314883 http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2015/05/25/actualidad/1432511998_896579.html http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1795825-carmena-y-colau-dos-mujeres-revolucionan-la-politica-espanola
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 3
Alberto Arce This Spanish journalist graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela and earned his masters from the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In February 2012 joined the AP as a correspondent in Honduras, where he reported on a prison fire that killed more than 360 inmates his first day on the job. Since then he has ventured into many hostile environments –from gang-controlled prisons to the barrios of Tegucigalpa for stories about gang terror and olice death squads. Nowadays, he joined AP’s Mexico City bureau, where he continues to cover Central America. In 2012 Arce won the Rory Peck Award for his coverage of the Battle for Misrata in the Lybian civil war and reported before that from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or Siria. «Alberto Arce writes with stunning power and pace. Under the most difficult circumstances, he tells stories from violence-torn Honduras with an authenticity that reveals to readers terrible realities and the victims but with an elegance that suggests there are no false notes. We are brought into Honduras by a journalist who seems fearless but not reckless. That lends an elegance to the work. His work in recent years and the quality of his dispatches are very much in the spirit of the work championed by Jim Batten.»
Jury statement: Batten Medal. American Society of Newspapers Editors
Dispatches from Honduras Spain / 2015 / 216 pages / Reporter Journalism Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Libros del KO), Latinamerica (Paidós Mx)
From 2012 to 2014, Alberto Arce was the only foreign correspondent in Tegucigalpa. Honduras is not Iraq, but each year 85 people out of 100,000 are murdered, a figure that exceeds that of Iraq. Honduras lives one of the least explained undeclared wars in the world. A labyrinthine war of all against all: the narco, who transports through the country the 90% of the Colombian and Venezuelan cocaine that reaches the United States; gang members turned into narco soldiers and extortionists; a police force without means that instead of arresting criminals, executes them; an army whose elite members (armed and advised by US elite army) murder teenagers traveling by motorcycle to see their girlfriends; a corrupt political class; a press that justifies the crimes of the death squads; a judicial system with no means threatened by gang members, police, army, politicians and press, which resolves less than 10% of the murders. And in the middle, a population that, at every opportunity, leaves the country. Honduras is not Iraq but could be if anybody would dare to explain it. Awards for Alberto Arce for the Honduras Coverage
• • • • • • • • • •
New York Press Club Continuing Coverage award 2015. Award of Excellence, Best of Digital Design 2014. Society for News Design. Tom Renner Award 2014. Investigative Reporters and Editors. Batten Medal 2014- American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Crime coverage. New York Press Club 2014 Overseas Press Club of America, Robert Spiers Benjamin Award 2013 Gramling Journalism award 2013 Society Professional Journalists New York. Deadline Club award 2013. The Society of Professional Journalists 2013 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for best foreign correspondence National Headliners Club 2013: News beat coverage or continuing story
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 4
Ander Izagirre Born in San Sebastian in 1976, Ander Izagirre is a journalist and has written travel articles and reports on many different subjects and has published several books. In 2015 he has won the European Press Prize to the best Investigative work for an article in the Spanish paper El País in which he revealed how Colombian army officers kidnapped civilian boys, murdered them, dressed them in guerrilla clothes and claimed rewards for their bodies. At the time, 4,716 cases had been recorded. The judges said Izagirre’s work was “compelling, splendidly organized and devastating at a human level. It told a terrible story that no one could forget.” (The Guardian). Basements of the world is a masterpiece of travel literature that could rub shoulders with the classics of the genre such as Chatwin or Bill Bryson, a work full of life, humor and literature. «In the book of Izagirre I found history, reflection, observation, humility, silence, suffering, anecdotes, joy.» Willy Uribe
The Basements of the World Spain / 2015 / 350 pages / Travel & Journalism Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Libros del KO)
As the great works of travel literature, this is much more than the story of a journey. It is the story of a real expedition in 2000 in search of the deepest places on the shores of the Dead Sea (Asia), Lake Eyre (Australia), the Russian coast of the Caspian Sea (Europe), the Californian Death Valley (North America), the Laguna del Carbón in the Argentinean Patagonia (South America), and Lake Assal in Djibouti (Africa). These all are extreme, inhospitable, bleak, usually deserted and always enigmatic places, and to live in them is to survive: these are places with no future. But if the book becomes travel literature it is because, beyond the description of the extreme conditions of all those places, the author is able to obtain from each of them incredible stories, with their own voices and own flavors, and to compel the reader to know more about them: with an entertaining prose, the author talks about the people who live there, their legends, their habits and their history, and leads us to impossible worlds inhabited by settlers and natives, by shepherds and soldiers, fugitives and lunatics that have converted these remote and bleak basements into places in the world.
Pockets filled with lead Spain / 2012 / 228 pages / Sport Journalism Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Libros del KO)
More than 10,000 copies sold!
A sports literature longseller, this title was originally published in 2004 and was awarded with the Marca Sports Literature Prize. Published again by Libros del KO in 2012 has been a bestseller again. Written as a homage to cycling and specifically to the Tour de France, the legendary competition par excellence, this book evokes the most human aspects of the Tour in 16 amazing episodes, from the most historic victories and defeats to the misfortunes of the Tour’s earliest competitors. They are tales that reveal the epic nature and suffering of cycling, but also the generosity and kindness that can spring from the sport.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 5
Mariangela Paone Mariangela Paone is an Italian journalist, who has been based in Madrid since 2008. She has worked for several Italian press titles during her career. Since 2010, she has written for Spanish daily El País and also runs a blog. Since October 2015, she works as editor in the new Spanish newspaper El Español.
In a near future the history books will explain that the Deep Recession drove into poverty a fourth of the Greek population. Data will be added regarding the debt, unemployment, and the amount of the successive economic bailouts; the causes will also be studied, and perhaps there will be a distribution of blame that is more or less balanced. But there will be no space to tell the tiny stories that are hidden behind a debacle. But Mariangela Paone has create this space.
Athens’ four seasons. Chronicles from a country drowned by its economic bailout Spain / 2014 / 160 pages / Journalism Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Libros del KO)
The journalist Mariangela Paone travelled to Greece several times during a year and, in the gaps opened by the great macroeconomic statistics, she wove her story of the Greek reality. In these pages there are models of gas masks in the shop windows of downtown Athens, but there are also popes fishing during the evenings in Salonica; there are welfare lines only for Greeks organized by Aurora Dorada, and the 30 litre cooking pot that the unemployed Constas walks through Athens to distribute food for everyone; the smell of burnt firewood in winter and the summer light that makes one dream of a redeeming tourism that will balance the accounts; doctors who receive bribes to treat patients and doctors who create outpatient units to treat undocumented immigrants and Greeks without health insurance; neoNazis who intimidate and murder, and all the Greeks who confront them.
«An absolutely recommended read to understand something that is so close to us, and at the same time so incomprehensible: how could we end up like this?» Babelia «In order to understand this contradictions and antinomies that make up part of the society of the XXI century, the best thing to do is to read the book of Mariangela Paone, a fantastic journalist. The street, the daily life of decadence in this laboratory of resistance and weariness that Greece has become, are explained better than anywhere else in the fictions of Petros Márkaris and in the reality Chronicles, such as the ones in this book.» Joaquín Estefanía
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 6
Paco Gómez Nadal He is a journalist specializing in Latin America and human rights. He has worked and published in some of the main mass media in Spain, Colombia, Panama and Nicaragua, and has collaborated in editorial teams in Venezuela, Bolivia and Brasil. His relationship with Latinamerica started in 1996 and he has lived a total of 15 of such conflicts during almost 20 years. Currently, he coordinates the node in Latin America and the Caribbean of Human Rights Everywhere (HREV), an organization specializing in the territorial defence of original peoples and peoples of African descent. This is his fifth book, published after Los muertos no hablan (Aguilar, 2002), El Malcontento (Otramérica, 2010), Dos años de locura (CEE-Panamá, 2011) y Terca resistencia (Amargord, 2014). For more details visit http://pacogomeznadal.com.
Indians, blacks and other undesirables Spain / 2015 / 184 pages / Journalism Territory: World / Sold: Spain, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay (Milrazones & LOM)
This is a complex journey to the racist roots of the exclusion in Latin America and The Caribbean. The author, who has an outstanding knowledge of the region, starts from the hypothesis of the colonial structure of power and the validity of the racist thesis in order to show us a contemporary reality of the political ‘exclusion” of almost 200 million inhabitants. He does so by establishing a dialogue between the domination attempts and the multiple examples of resistance. In order to do that he continuously jumps from present to past and from the experiences lived on the field to the contemporary theories of the ‘colonialism of power’, ‘necropolitics’, ‘self-determination’ or ‘developmentalism’. The book mixes a journalism style with an essay approach, but it does not try to be academic; it does not pretend to be neutral either. The author narrates from the bottom and looks sideways towards the indigenous peoples, of African and Asian descent, who inhabit this very diverse region that tried to be homogenized, first by the European invaders and colonizers, later by the independencies and their imported modern State model.
The book is structured in three parts. The first one defends the main hypothesis of the book and shows us some of the techniques to make statistically ‘disappear’ the ‘undesirables’, as well as the excluding structure that is still current in the XXI century. The second one goes more deeply into the historical reasons that explain the consolidation of such structure. The third one, changing radically the tone, includes several chronicles written in the field with a journalistic style, which introduce us into the Amazonia, in the Colombian Pacific, in Surinam, the French Guyana or Panama.
Thus, the book becomes an enjoyable and passionate introduction to some of the hottest issues of the political, social and academic debates in Latin America and the Caribbean, providing numerous bibliographic references and opening windows of curiosity so that the reader keeps on delving on these issues.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 7
Víctor Lenore Is a Spanish cultural journalist with twenty years experience. He has published in mainstream newspapers such as El País, Público and La Razón, and has directed Cara B, a book collection about classic Spanish music albums. He also published the left wing cultural magazine Ladinamo and was one of the curators of the exhibition «The immaterial legacy» in Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art.
Why does everybody aspire to be cool? What does that imply exactly? Are we buying a depoliticised version of modern culture? Old bohemians and countercultural tribes aspired to things that the market did not offer, from sexual freedom to political emancipation. The modern hipster is an obedient version of that, looking only for commercial utopias that can be bought with a credit card.
Hipsters as political problem Spanish / 2014 / 154 pages / Essay Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Capitán Swing)
Thomas Frank, a respected journalist from the United States, says that «big money loves revolutions that are limited to aesthetic changes». Hipster culture offers exactly that, so it’s no surprise that right wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch invests 53 million euros in Vice Corporation, that many consider the MTV of the hipster generation. From Obey to Kanye West, from Harmony Korine to Diplo, we are submerged in a culture that looks revolutionary but embraces politically reactionary values such as meritocracy, consumerism, anglocentrism, elitism and racist discrimination. That is the reason why the marketing industry and the promoters of gentrification processes are so comfortable with the hipster aesthetic. Combining interviews, personal experience and references to key titles about modern culture, this essay offers devastating examples of how the culture industry is more controlled than ever by corporate values and right wing practices. Hipsters are, in fact, a false subculture, that offers no shelter from dominant values, but a celebration of consumerism, cool nihilism and political demobilization. While the counterculture years where about burning USA flags and draft cards, modern hipsters campaign for Obama reelection after the president supported Guantánamo, bailed out Wall Street and continued military operations in the Middle East. Readership The book is primarily aimed towards a general readership. The “typical” audience would be best defined as the same readers of modern webs and magazines such as Vice, Pichfork, Artforum, Rolling Stone and New Musical Express. Also for those who read Chavs (Owen Jones), High Fidelity and Juliette Naked (Nick Hornby) or The Dissident Gardens (Jonathan Lethem). The goal would be to attract the audience engaged in modern culture but also interested in political protest such as Occupy Wall Street, the Spanish «indignados» or the cuts in arts & education across the western world.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 8
Pablo Pardo Is a correspondent in Washington of the daily newspaper El Mundo since 2003. He has sporadically collaborated with The Weekly Standard, BBC and The Miami Herald, and in the think tanks New America Foundation in Washington and Social Market Foundation in London. He holds a master’s degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University.
«Written with forensic elegance, this book is a key to understand what we did in those deserts, when we muzzled our scruples in the name of miserably spoiled principles. A must read book» El Mundo
The Monster. Memories of a torturer Spanish / 2012 / 154 pages / Essay Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Capitán Swing)
The private of the US army Damien Cosetti was facing a 23 year sentence for the tortures committed in the Abu Ghraib prisons, in Iraq, and the Bagram prisons, in Afghanistan, but in 2005 he was declared ‘not guilty’. After his release, the journalist Pablo Pardo managed to gain his trust and, for four years, between 2007 and 2011, he maintained countless conversations with him about his activities as an ‘interrogator’. The result is a daunting summary of the memories of this interrogator who does not speak the language of his prisoners, and who tortured them in the cruellest and most useless ways… The text draws a thorough portrait of human cruelty and injustice, but above all, it describes with clarity the huge mess of those campaigns, with soldiers without any training and military commanders willing to sacrifice their subordinates with total impunity.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 9
Íñigo Domínguez Rome correspondent for the Bilbao (Spain) newspaper El Correo since 2001, the fascination he feels for contemporary Italy is undiminished all these years later. He has also worked in Venezuela, Greece and the Balkans. In 2015 has been awarded with the XXXI Cirilo Rodríguez Journalism Prize, aimed at rewarding the work of correspondents and special envoys of the Spanish press in the Foreign (more detail in http:// elpais.com/elpais/2015/05/29/actualidad/1432926854_128896.html). «A must for anyone wanting to enjoy a fascinating read what degree, at bottom, no longer one of the many facets of the human condition: the chasm considerable darkness that society is able to reach when nobodyIt does nothing to prevent evil from taking over the roost. Get a copy, they are not going to regret it.» Jot Down Magazine
Chronicles of the Mafia
More than 8,000 copies sold in Spain
Spanish / 2014 / 432 pages / Essay Jornalism Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Libros del KO), Latinamérica (Paidós Planeta MX)
In 2001, Íñigo Domínguez commenced his odyssey as a correspondent in Italy, and he incorporated two habits into his everyday life: the first was to start every day by typing the word ‘mafia’ into the news agencies’ search engines, and the second was to pay regular visits to the Hollywood video club, where its distinguished clientele (which included such luminaries as Coppola and Bertolucci) gave talks about cinema. This book is the result of these two passions. On one hand, it recounts – over the course of 22 chapters – different episodes in the history of the Sicilian Mafia, from Sicily to Little Italy. This thrilling account reveals the dramatic way in which the Mafia has been interwoven, time after time, with Italy’s history. Furthermore, the book also contains an annotated cinematic compendium of over 250 films that attempts to explain how the figure of the gangster and the Mafioso have evolved in cinema, and which can help us to understand why we are so fascinated by movies about men with fedoras and machine guns, or when somebody recites a line from The Godfather. Complete press dossier: http://www.udllibros.com/libro-cr%F3nicas_de_la_mafia-W660010013
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 10
Juan Hernández Villegas A Doctor of Law, he has been a manager of large companies and a university professor, and is considered to be one of the leading experts on international finance and tax havens. As an author, he has specialised in policy criticism of the deregulation of the globalised financial markets. He has participated in the development of Attac and is a member of the Scientific Board of Attac-Spain and of the Tax Justice Network. He is the author of such books as Europe and its Opaque Finances (2008), The Smokescreen of the G-20 (2009) and The Casino that Governs us (2012), Financial lobbies. The tentacles of power (2014). Finally a book that explains what the vulture funds are and how predatory capitalism works. A little-known, but which increasingly more talk.
Vulture funds. Predatory capitalism Spain / 2015 / 300 pages / Economy Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual), Argentina, Chile (Capital Intelectual)
After the great financial crisis, vulture funds have become big businesses that speculate with bank real estate packages, social housing and public debt. These are investment funds specialized in plundering economies stricken by foreign debt. By purchasing large debt portfolios with cash collection problems, they seek maximum profitability forcing unscrupulously the situation of debtors. And when the debt is unsustainable, these funds claim the full nominal amount of what they bought at bargain prices. This book clarifies what vulture funds are and how they act, and denounces the lobbying strategies that large financial groups develop over the international legal framework to favor their interests and to capitalize their investments, with little scruples.
Financial lobbies. The tentacles of power Spain / 2014 / 256 pages / Economy Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual), Argentina, Chile (Capital Intelectual) This book takes us on a journey through the financial power centres and reveals the truth about the different organisations that influence Wall Street, Washington, Brussels, London and Madrid. For the first time, an author dares to name the companies that benefit from the influence exerted on governments by banking lobbies: Grupo Santander, BNP, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital and the big auditing firms such as Ernst&Young, KPMG, Deloitte & Touche and Pricewaterhouse.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 11
Catalonia affair Ivan Serrano
How long can the Spanish government ignore Catalan aspirations? Is the support to independence really consolidated? Would a unilateral secession of Catalonia be justified?
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UAB University, a master’s degree in Public Management from UAB-UPF-ESADE and a doctor’s degree in Political Science from UPF University.
From a Nation to a State
Catalan / 2013 / 208 pages / Political Essay / Territory: World / Sold: Catalan (Angle Editorial) Trias Fargas Award to Political Essays. Is Catalunya entitled to raise a unilateral secession of the Spanish state? This is the central question posed by the book. The historic inability to successfully fit in contemporary Spain and the repeated denial of a consultation on the political status of Catalonia, are factors that seem to justify it. This Catalan aspiration complies with three basic requirements: it is a democratic expression, has a continuing character in time and all possible accommodation systems within the State are exhausted.The author analyzes how the national identification of the Catalans has evolved during the democratic period and how the preferences of the population have passed from the self-governement to supporting independence. This support is currently no longer based on the own identity solely, but also in rejecting the unfair treatment by the State and the expectations of a better social welbeing.
Marc Guinjoan, Toni Rodón & Marc Santjaume i Calvet
Guinjoan, Rodón and Santjaume are associate professors of Political Theory at the Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona, where the three of them studied Political Science.
Catalonia, a step forward
Catalan / 2013 / 160 pages / Political Essay / Territory: World / Sold: Catalan (Angle Editorial) This book shows that the sovereign and democratic uprising lived by the Catalan society is a latent process that became intensified with the decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court against the Statute of Autonomy, which has emerged in a popular movement from below, irrespective of political and economic elites of the country. In response to political and social events of the last decade, the Catalans have opted mostly for a transversal and integrator independentism, which has put the right to decide at the center of political debate. Therefore, Catalonia is leaving behind the autonomous scheme, which is considered obsolete for the aspirations of the country, and is making the first steps towards a new democratic legal framework. And at this point in the process the authors show that Catalonia meets the main requirements for secession: it is a relatively rich country, has its own culture, has a self-government but constitutes a minority with difficulties in accessing political power. Now Catalans just need to choose the path they want to take..
Antoni Segura
Born in 1952, he is the head of the Contemporary History department and Director of the Centre d’Estudis Històrics Internacionals (CEHI) at the University of Barcelona.
Chronicle of Catalanism. From the Autonomy to the Independence
Catalan / 2013 / 336 pages / Political Essay / Territory: World / Sold: Catalan (Angle Editorial) A halfway between a history book, an essay and a newspaper article, the author explores the history of Catalonia and the evolution of Catalanism and Civil Society from the Renaissance up to the present moment. This historical account is the basis for building the analysis of the current situation, in which the author is an exceptional narrator, with a deep and direct knowledge of the facts. Antonio Segura marks the decision of the Constitutional Court in 2010 to weaken the Statute approved by the Catalan Parliament as the point of inflection for the whole country, that stopped believen that Spain would acknowledge its aspirations within a pluarl state and embraced the right to decide as the only possible way. The path of the Catalanism driven and conducted by the Catalan Civil Society.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 12
César Rendueles Born in 1975 in Gijón (Spain), Doctor of Philosophy, César Rendules is a Professor at the Department of Sociological Theory in the Political Science and Sociology Faculty of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. He was a founding member of the cultural intervention group Ladinamo, and for eight years was Project Director for the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. He has contributed many articles to different specialist magazines on subjects concerning epistemology, political philosophy and cultural criticism. He has great experience as a translator, and in 2011 he was curator of the exhibition «Walter Benjamin, Constelaciones».
Best Spanish Essay of 2013 Translated into English (Columbia University Press) and German (Surkhamp) American edition foreworded by Slavoj Zizek and Evgeny Morosov
Sociophobia. Political change in the age of digital utopia
More than 6,000 copies sold!
Spanish / 2013 / 210 pages / Essay Territory: World Spanish, English and Italian / Sold: Spain (Capitán Swing), English (Columbia University Press), Latinamérica (Penguin Random House Mx)
Following the collapse of the neoliberal utopia, the great ideological cliché of our time is the idea that communication technologies can generate positive social dynamics and improve things. We would like to think of the Internet as a kind of technological magic wand that has transformed all of modernity’s practical dilemmas to the point that they have been virtually overcome. Sociophobia begins by questioning this cyber-fetishist dogma and claims that the World Wide Web has produced a social reality that has diminished, not increased. Simply put, it has lowered our expectations with respect to political interventions and personal relations. In light of this, Sociophobia embarks on an ambitious critical reassessment of our antagonistic political traditions to suggest that post-capitalism is a project that is feasible, intimate and friendly. help us to understand why we are so fascinated by movies about men with fedoras and machine guns, or when somebody recites a line from The Godfather.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 13
Carolina del Olmo She graduated in Philosophy but left the academic milieu to work in the private cultural sector (she is now Culture Director at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, one of the most important private cultural institutions in Spain). Nevertheless, she continues researching and publishing papers and essays, first in the field of urban studies and, after 2009, when her first son was born, about the sociology of motherhood. She has also been co-editor and publisher of the left wing cultural magazine Ladinamo.
Where is my Tribe? Spanish / 2013 / 232 pages / Essay Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual), Latinamerica (Paidós Mx)
More than 4,000 copies sold!
Having a child is one of the most common experiences in the world, but nowadays it is even more extraordinary than ever. We live ignoring our own vulnerable and powerless nature, so dependant on the others, and so far away from our fantasy of independence. And when, all of the sudden, the evidence of this vulnerability becomes flesh and bones in the body of our child, everything collapses for us. Where is my Tribe? puts forward these issues trying to view them in a wider context than just family or mother and child relationship.
In words of Carolina del Olmo: «The ideology sustaining the book is, in essence, leftist or marxist (a marxism heavily influenced by Karl Polanyi). Surely, it is openly anti-capitalist. But I think it is written in a way that it doesn’t presuppose that the reader has a marxist background at all (even if it tends to be perceived as a great read for marxist readers, for what I’ve seen). »Regarding feminism the question is more complex. I undoubtedly consider myself a feminist. But I think there’s plenty of room for ambiguity and discussion. One of my main thesis (the importance of care ethics and care politics, the denunciation of capitalism from the perspective of care, and the emphasis on the vulnerable and dependent nature of people) is a feminist issue. But I criticize the «old mainstream» feminism that tends to equal women liberation with paid work, and tends to equal care with sacrifice and burden. And I also maintain a critical stance about postmodernist feminism. »I think that another main subject of the book is also a feminist issue: the criticism of expert knowledge, primarily the denouncement of the tutelage it exerts on mothers (and women in general), and the need to empower ourselves in motherhood (via collective action).» Readership The book is primarily aimed at recent mothers and fathers. The typical audience would be the same readers of child-raising literature. But it also targets another audience: readers interested in the criticism of capitalist society, who pay attention to current sociological/philosophical questions as care crisis and care ethics. Those who read Zygmunt Bauman, Eva Illouz, Richard Sennett, Arlie Russell Hochschild or Carol Gilligan would find a new battery of arguments in the sphere of motherhood, a field that is seldom addressed by sociological essays.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 14
Esteban Hernández Is journalist and lawyer. He works at El Confidencial, one of the most important online journals, and he has written for newspapers like El Mundo and La Vanguardia and other cultural magazines. He also writes for the supplement Cultura/s (La Vanguardia) and music magazine Ruta 66. He is one of the authors of the book #Podemos (Ed. Deusto/ Planeta). “A superb analysis of one of the crucial battles in today’s class war, described using an irresistible cocktail of sociology, journalism and rock and roll.» César Rendueles, author of Sociophobia
The end of the middle classes Spanish / 2014 / 392 pages / Essay Territory: World/ Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual)
The book inquires into the decline of a social class that is also the end of the confidence in the fu-ture. Middle classes thought that if they accomplished what they were told to do, they would be rewarded with a fulfilling future, they would be better off, their children would live better than them and their life chances will be broadened. Now they are the class of disenchantment and anger. Its end is bringing some new novelties to politics and society that the book explores through some real characters, from precarious lawyers to unemployed musicians, through business schools ana-lysts or successful entrepreneurs and from different sources, from sociology to psychology or man-agement, taking some time to focus on culture, the mirror in whom social trends reflect in the first place, and where the paths society will walk usually foresee. Through the description of daily life and the analysis of the theories that describe it, the book goes over the fascinating story of the creation and end of middle classes, the social stratum that belonged to the 20th Century and that has become a problem in the 21st Century for its desire of stability and its resistance to change. Readership The book is primarily aimed towards to average reader who is interested in knowing better what is happening to him, and the knowledge of social, political and personal consequences of the ongoing transformations, but also it has had very good reception in specialized public of different areas. It has had good reception between readers of sociological essay on the Zygmunt Bauman style, fans of Simon Reynolds music or reader interested in management books.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 15
Other authors Sami Naïr Professor of Political Science of Paris VIII, is one of the European intellectuals who knows best the Arab World. He has published several books, among them La inmigración explicada a mi hija (2001), El imperio frente a la diversidad del mundo (2003), Y vendrán …. las migraciones en tiempos hostiles (2006), La Europa mestiza. Inmigración, ciudadanía, codesarrollo (2010), La lección tunecina. Como la revolución de la Dignidad ha derrocado al poder mafioso (2011). He is also a regular contributor to several European newspapers, such as El País and El Periódico in Spain.
Why Do They Rebel? Spanish / 2013 / 248 pages / Essay Territory: World except Frech / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual) Is the Arab spring over? This is a legitimate question, as only yesterday we saw thousands of youngsters who challenged dictatorships peacefully, and managed to beat them in the name of modern and secular values. What we see today, coming from the polls, are religious, conservative majorities, and projects of society which belong to another era. What happened? In this essay, Sami Nair analyses and explains this seeming contradiction, based on his deep knowledge of the societies involved, and always with an approach that envisages history, politics and culture. It shows why and how these democratic uprisings ended up with the victory of political Islamism, and he studies these revolutions from Tunisia to Yemen, going throughout Egypt, Syria and Lybia. At the same time, he explains the undergoing political changes in Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia, and the wave of protests in Sahel. It is within this wide context, that he interprets the historic earthquake that is disrupting the South and the East of the Mediterranean. See Press reviews: https://www.hightail.com/download/elNJT2pORkVubVVQWWNUQw
Jacobo Rivero & Claudio Tamburrini Jacobo Rivero (Madrid, 1974) is a journalist and a basquet coacher. Claudio Tamburrini (Buenos Aires, 1954) is a researcher for the Centre for Healthcare Ethics at Stockholm University. He has published several books on penal philosophy, bioethics and the ethics of sport, like for example: Genetic Technology and Sport-Ethical questions (2005), The Ethics of Sports Medicine (2009) and Recidivist Punishments-The philosopher’s view (2012).
From game to sport
Spanish / 2014 / 220 pages / Essay Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual), Argentina (Capital Intelectual) Foreword by Ángel Cappa. This is a book about sport and ethics, about when hobbies become professional interests, about doping and sexism, about the commercialisation of sport and of the sporting elites, as well as other topics such as the role of the media, marketing, big sporting spectacles and the industry that has grown up around sport. The authors use anecdotes and specific examples from the different areas of sport to reflect on the values (or anti-values) that are represented by sports today, and particularly football. In the final part of the book, Claudio Tamburrini tells the story of his amazing escape from the Mansión Seré detention and torture centre. .
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 16
Other authors Sergio Federovisky Biologist and environmental journalist; since 2008 he has been chairman of La Plata Environmental Agency (Argentina). He has worked on Argentina’s most important newspapers and on television channels, and for the past seven years he has been director of the Argentinean programmes Environment and atmosphere and Zero Pollution. He is the author of Nobody cares about the environment (2007) and History of the environment (2011)..
The Myths about the Environment
Spanish / 2013 / 192 pages / Essay / Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Clave Intelectual), Argentina (Capital Intelectual) With an ironic turn of phrase and an acid sense of humour, Federovisky unmasks the “green myths” – the lies, the clichés and the declarations filled with good intentions that conceal the lack of any solutions to our environmental problems. After the 1992 summit in Rio, it became fashionable to claim that change should start with the actions of individuals, through awarenessraising, but this has only served to gloss over the lack of political decisions. The problem is a capitalist system that promotes and fosters irresponsible consumerism, and we cannot possibly save the planet while continuing with this system. In this book, Federovisky shines a light on the processes that are currently the most damaging in terms of pollution – the indirect subsidies for fossil fuels, the condoning of the exploitation of forests, and the connivance of governments and big industry.
Francisco Gracia Alonso
Was born in Barcelona in 1960. He is a Professor of Prehistory at Universitat de Barcelona and a specialist on Protohistory of the Iberian Peninsula and Historiography of Archaeology.
Furor Barbari! Celtic and Germanic peoples against Rome
Spanish / 2011 / 320 pages / History / Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Sello Editorial), Poland (Bellona) Celtic and Germanic tribes fought against Roman expansion for centuries, first in the Italian Peninsula and later all across Europe. They did it step by step, losing battles but refusing to consider themselves defeated. For five centuries, Roman legions suffered important, even humiliating defeats not by heavily armed armies, but by Celtic and German tribes, capable of fighting to the point of extermination or beating the enemy to defend their most sacred principles: patriotism and freedom.Note: Furor Barbari! includes maps, pictures, engravings and diagrams of battles and campaigns.
Jorge Juan Eiroa Is a Professor of Prehistory at Universidad de Murcia (Spain). He has taken part in many investigation projects and directed several archaeological sites. He loves teaching and has published a large list of popular science books on prehistory.
Prehistory of the World
Spanish / 2010 / 1.080 pages / History / Territory: World / Sold: Spain (Sello Editorial) Prehistory is the story of that time that left no written history. A time that remained buried underground for thousands of years until archeologists rescued it with patience, devotion and wisdom. Prehistory of the World tells the story of this adventure so everyone can understand it, but also with the purpose of revealing the adventure, the suffering and the human greatness contained in our past. We are what we are because thousands or millions of years ago we were what we were: the chosen species.
oh!books literary agency
Foreign Rights / 17
Fernando Savater Fernando Savater is a leading intellectual figure in Spain, a well known essayist and a celebrated author. Born in San Sebastián (Spain), he has been Philosophy professor at the University of the Basque Country and teaches currently at the Complutense University of Madrid. He has lately been awarded the International Prize of Poetry and Essay Octavio Paz 2012 in recognition of his work.
The Pleasure of Reading Spain - Sello Editorial 2010 / 210 pages / Essay
Oh! Books Literary Agency Passatge Alió, 10, 2, 2 08037 Barcelona (Spain) es.linkedin.com/in/ohbooks
Juanjo Boya juanjoboya@ohbooks.es (34) 656 392 482 (34) 930 075 196
Fernando Savater has written novels, essays and articles, but above all, he thinks of himself as a “good reader”, one that is able to hunt for the best authors in a jungle of books. In a similar essay from the eighties, La infancia recuperada (Childhood Recovered), he wrote about the books that deeply marked his childhood, like Treasure Island and William Brown. This time he talks about Poe, Camus, Erasmus, Voltaire, Dick Francis… Savater is like a Dearthe colleague, hunter showing prey he has captured, like a traveller talking endlessly of the beatiful places he has visited. His passion is infectious, and many If you have an inquiry a reader will (re)discover with him the endless about pleasure of reading.one of our
books, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Marina Bladé marinablade@ohbooks.es (34) 626 109 087 (34) 934 190 749
oh!books literary agency
Journalism & Essay /Foreign ForeignRights Rights/List 18