The anger under the skin
Sorj Chalandon
Translation by Adolfo García Ortega. Seix Barral, 2025. 384 pages. 20.90 euros
The French novelist takes as a plot what could have been the true story of an orphan interned in a French penal colony to give shape to a story that also allows us to believe in the ability to practice decency.
> Read Leonardo Padura’s review
True, a love story
Juan del Val
Planet, 2025. 360 pages. 21.90 euros
The best prize in Spanish literature rewards a vulgar and predictable sentimental novel, with flat characters, banal reflections and credible sex scenes.
> Read Jordi Gracia’s review
when the wind speaks
Angela Banzas
Planet, 2025. 360 pages. 21.90 euros
The novel finalist for the 2025 Planeta Prize is set in post-war Galicia and the author uses a style and recipe typical of the commercial novel without the result being convincing.
> Read Nadal Suau’s review
The Golden Way: How Ancient India Transformed the World
William Dalrymple
Translation by Ricardo García Herrero. Dessaferro, 2025. 464 pages, 27.96 euros
From mathematics to art, religion or architecture, the subcontinent has built a forgotten bridge between the knowledge of the East and the West.
> Read the article by Luis Mazarrasa.
Proleterka
Fleur Jaeggy
Translation by María Ángeles Cabré Castells. Tusquets, 2025. 136 pages. 17.90 euros
The Swiss author, who developed her literature in Italian, is a corrosive writer, and at the same time perversely delicate.
> Read Maria Negroni’s article
Art it seems, banana is
Laura Revuelta
Toro, 2025. 256 pages, 21.90 euros
In this essay, critic Laura Revuelta offers 21 keys to approaching 21st-century art through some of its great recent milestones
> Read Ángeles García’s review
They called it peace
Lauren Benton
Translation by Efrén del Valle Crítica, 2025. 344 pages. 22.90 euros
The author traces the history of the last 500 years through the range of forms of aggression that exists between absolute peace and total war (and yes, that includes the conquest of America)
> Read the review by Oriol Regué Sendrós
Uncertain sex
Luca Brisson
Translation by Pedro Amoros Juan. Notebooks of the labyrinth, 2025. 164 pages. 19 euros
The debate addressed in this essay focuses on what the simultaneous or successive possession of both sexes meant for ancient societies.
> Read David Hernández de la Fuente’s review
I, Threshold. Articles published in Jano magazine
Francisco Umbral
Edition by Bénédicte de Buron-Brun. Renaissance, 2025. 346 pages. 18.91 euros
The Renacimiento publishing house saves the journalistic work that the writer published in a defunct professional magazine in two poorly planned books.
> Read Anna Caballé’s review here
The heart and the moon. Articles published in Jano magazine
Francisco Umbral
Edition by Alex Prada. Renaissance, 2025. 312 pages. 18.91 euros
The two volumes, which should be one and, if two, do not have different titles, because they confuse the reader by being the same thing in two parts, collect a total of 234 articles and were published between 1971 and 2006.
> Read Anna Caballé’s review
