Sez our foreign correspondent of Bar Agujas d’Ouro in Estremoz, Portugal. Its radical eclecticism picknmixery suggests the architect may have mistakenly interpreted the lack of aesthetic coordination in many cathedrals and other large, old, respectable buildings as the result of a synchronic design choice rather than the typical diachronic process in which committees regret the…
In 1927 the Catalan literary researcher and writer, Ramon Miquel i Planas (1874-1950; henceforth MiP) wrote a little book, published in a bibliophile edition, called La llegenda del llibreter assassí. In it he reflects on the origins and recycling of “Le bibliomane ou le nouveau Cardillac”, an anonymous tale published as if true in 1836…
Someone’s passed me the English edition, with the usual gibberish-infested flap. The Scotsman describes it as having “a dramatic tension that so many contemporary novels today seem to lack,” while Scotland on Sunday says, “The translation by Lucia Graves is excellent, mixing formality with poetry, so the rambling prose occasionally sparkles with lovely phrases ……
Whether you like it or not, the best Catalan writers write in Spanish and, with few exceptions, have done so for the last 500 years. Excluding them from the Frankfurt Book Fair’s celebration of Catalan culture (unless they pay their tickets and shut up) is like leaving Kafka out of a celebration of Czech writing,…
Some great location- and Catalan actor-spotting fun at Méliès last night, where we saw Tom Tykwer’s version of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. Easy enough: the torture-turned-orgy scene in El Pueblo Español; the various use of Girona’s Pujada Sant Domènec, with the palace arch and the view up the steps to Sant Martí Sacosta, and the little…
Mr B may be between jobs, but there’s no end to the man’s industry. Here he is in action up at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. [ “The world is inhabited by two categories of people,” anticipated officer Fumero to himself as he slunk after the couple through the Plaza Real and into the…
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