Guillem

BOOK REVIEW

GUILLEM

Author: Núria Cadenes From the reader report by: Laura McGloughlin

Guillem is a hard-hitting and highly original novel about the murder of Guillem Agulló i Salvador by far-right skinheads in Montanejos in 1993, which won the Valencia Negra Best Novel Prize in 2020. Using a stunning blend of newspaper reportage, family interviews, court transcripts and fictional narrative, Cadenes details the events and background leading up to the fateful event, and the trial by media and miscarriage of justice that followed and are still being felt today.

One of the strengths of this novel is Cadenes’ decision to eschew a straight, linear narrative in favour of a multi-voiced chronicle. Anecdotes from Guillem’s family are interspersed with court transcripts and articles from the press, and this plurality of voices throughout the novel serves to highlight how a murder affects not only a victim’s family, but ripples out through their wider community too, and this style makes the impact of the story all the greater.

While this novel is deeply rooted in Spanish society (and Valencia in particular), the rising visibility of the far-right across Europe affords it an increasingly urgent relevance in translation. Guillem doesn’t pretend to have a neutral perspective - the author is an avowed radical - but it is a highly original, impactful novel which I highly recommend for translation into English.

PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS UK

ASTERISC AGENTS

Title GUILLEM GUILLEM

Author Núria Cadenes Genre Literature Pages 184

ISBN 978-84-17918-19-4 Year of publication 2020 Number of editions 5 Language Catalan Spanish retail price 17.00 €

Author’s biography: Núria Cadenes was born in Barcelona and lives in Horta Sud, near Valencia. She works as a bookseller and contributes to various media (Vilaweb, El Temps). She has published, among others, the books Cartes de la presó (1990), L’Ovidi (2002), El banquer (2013) and Secundaris (2018). With AZ (2009) she won the Ciutat d’Elx prize and the Critics’ Award for Valencian Writers, and, with Tota la veritat (2016), the Crims de Tinta. About GUILLEM: “Writing from a journalist who does not ignore events” - Ara Balear “Essential reading. Not only a fierce denunciation but good journalistic literature, very interesting, and with a clear stylistic ambition. ” - web “Llegir en cas d’incendi” (Read in case of fire.) www.es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Núria_Cadenas

Synopsis: Guillem Agulló was assassinated in Montanejos in the early hours of April 11, 1993. Antifascist. Antiracist. Independentist. He was eighteen years old. The case convulsed and marked an entire generation of young people. Guillem Agulló has become a symbol of freedom. This “narrative non fiction” plunges us into the violent Valencia of the 1990’s. Núria Cadenas, with a distilled and contained style, has immersed herself in the details of the case, in the newspapers of the time, in the memories of family and friends of Guillem and even in his own past to measure the distance between the word injustice and the word dignity. The assassination of Guillem Agulló is a chilling example of the impunity with which fascism acts, under the protection of police forces and the judiciary, and with the shameful complicity of a press prepared to manipulate the truth to the extreme.

Publisher who has published: Amsterdam (Ara Llibres)

Publisher: Asterisc Agents Asterisc Agents prides itself on a curated list of authors who have established the agency on the international market. Their works have won some of the top national and international prizes and travelled around the world, finding new readers in other latitudes.

Publishing rights available from: Asterisc Agents - CIF B66831454 Barcelona www.asteriscagents.com Contact: Natàlia Berenguer Gamell [natalia@asteriscagents.com] Phone: (+34) 610 596 295 Prizes and reviews: Finalist Valencia Negra prize; Premi Omnium for the best book published in 2020; Finalist for the first Premi Finestres prize, 2020; Top 5 novels 2020 in La Vanguardia

Comments: Some crimes, for different reasons, become emblematic or symbolic. The murder of Guillem Agulló is one of them. Pere Anoni Pons describes this work as “a book that chills the blood.”