They called them Amazons, Tribades, Sapphics, Lesbians or Inverts. They are the protagonists of Babelia's book of the week. Those who belong to the line of Sappho. Women who, between the late 19th and 20th centuries, challenged atavistic prejudices to build a liberating, creative and vital universe. From the painter Louise Abbéma to Sarah Bernhardt. From Virginia Woolf to the star Josephine Baker and many others. Thanks to careful research and a memorable stylistic exercise, they brilliantly present themselves through the novel “After Sappho” by Selby Wynn Schwartz. “We already knew that the personal is political. Now we see that the individual is collective.” Paco Cerdà does not hesitate to describe the book, which had great critical success, as a bomb.
No less explosive is a now-rediscovered classic of literature written by women: “An Exemplary Woman” by the Italian Alba de Céspedes. Javier Aparicio describes it precisely: The novel is a “cautious monologue in which a young woman tells with composure and persistence, like a kind of intimate record of solitary writing in order to achieve something similar to redemption.” Another story with a female perspective is Camila Fabbri's most recent novel, The Queen of Dance, a “short and rounded” novel, apparently by Carlota Rubio, which was a finalist for the Herralde Novel Prize. Another short novel is The Farewells, but this one is less rounded (in Carlos Pardo's opinion). The author who shone with “The Perfect Days” returns with the story of a hedonistic “posh” faced with a crisis of maturity.
This week we are also reviewing a novel that basically serves as a contemporary piece. Historian Joseba Louzao has read Tiza y pancarta, the debut work of Carlos Mayor Oreja. Like other Basque writers – Aramburu, Arriola, Orbegozo… – he faces the challenge of narrating violence. In this case, the protagonist is a son of a wealthy family who returns to San Sebastián to teach courses in the formation of the national spirit at a religious school. ETA will point this out. The action takes place in the decline phase of the authoritarian modernization that represented Franco's developmentism. This period is analyzed in an important contemporary history book: An Authoritarian Modernity. Developmentalism in Franco's Spain (1956-1973), Anna Catharina Hofmann's study that problematizes the story that technocrats constructed about themselves. The review was written by Professor Nicolás Sesma.
Finally, we would like to highlight a good journalism book: Rezwana. A European file. The author is Mariangela Paone and is told in collaboration with the protagonist: an Afghan girl who lost her family in a shipwreck. As María Martín says: “Rezwana appeared in a chronicle. And many years later, the journalist learned that she would be expelled from Sweden, where she lived in her great-aunt's house. They met then and when Paone explained the case of this victim of the migration drama, he described the blindness with which Europe acts at its borders.
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