Barcelona

by Carlos Zanón, Lara Costafreda (illustrator)

Carlos Zann and Lara Costafreda invite you on a personal, unique, and passionate journey through iconic and lesser-known sites of Barcelona. From descending and ascending Las Ramblas to viewing the city from the heights of Montjuc, exploring the novels and writers who have celebrated it, admiring Antoni Gaud's legacy, enjoying a sunset in the Barri Gtic, and losing yourself in the captivating gaze of Pepe Carvalho or Juan Marse's characters, this Tintablanca is an intimate portrait of the city, showcasing its human and cosmopolitan side, as a multicultural, educated, contradictory, and ever-changing capital. Carlos Zann describes it as 'a city you can't stay mad at for long, as everything it does, good or bad, is without intent or will. It's nervous and electrifying, promiscuous, impulsive, and timid, addicted to salon romanticism, Wagnerian epic, and the endless soap opera of the bourgeois novel.'

240 pages

Published January 18, 2024

About the author

Carlos Zanón (Barcelona, 1966) poeta, novelista, guionista, articulista y crítico literario. Su dedicación a la novela negra ha hecho que se haya emparentado su obra con la de autores como Vázquez Montalbán o Jim Thompson.

Reviews

[Dani Ollé · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bellísima edición y sugerente texto sobre Barcelona

[Madeline S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have chalked this up to being a decent coffee table book, but the last chapter got me somehow and turned the book from a two-star read to a three-star read. It's hard to describe your hometown, because you feel like you're giving some part of it away to an audience that doesn't truly understand anyway. Once you commit it to the page, was it really ever yours to begin with?

"It's Barcelona or nothing." This book is what I imagine Calvino's Invisible Cities is like, dream-like sauntering through a European city you vaguely recollect yet have a deep love for.

[Marga Pont · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una guía de Barcelona muy personal, la Barcelona de Carlos Zanón, la turística, la literaria, la de su infancia, la de sus recuerdos y la de sus vivencias.
Para descubrir o mirar de otra manera Barcelona, tanto si ya la conoces como si la quieres visitar por primera vez.

[reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

6,5 out of 10