New Spanish Books: The online guide of titles from Spanish publishers and literary agents with rights for translation in the UK. To consult titles available in other markets please click on the above links.
Jessica and her husband, Marek Laskowski (who has already been a panel member for NSB), form the partnership behind Primrose Hill Books and are helped by one full-time colleague, Kelly Parslow. The shop is small, but there are nearly 10,000 new and carefully selected titles packed onto the shelves of the ground floor and as many second hand books in the basement all of which are carefully catalogued and sold through the website and posted out all over the world.
Jessica took over the bookshop in 1986 and had been running it for a few months when Marek, who lived locally, wandered in looking for recommendations... It was a few years before he was able to switch careers from computing to full-time bookselling, but he's never regretted it! He computerised the stock and the accounts and facilitated the transition to online sales for the secondhand books so that Primrose Hill Books was able to be a local shop with an international presence and reach.
Lucy Popescu
Lucy is a writer, journalist, editor and arts critic with a background in literature, theatre and human rights. The Good Tourist, her book about human rights and ethical travel, was published by Arcadia Books in late 2008. She worked with the English Centre of PEN for over 20 years, and co-edited the PEN anthology Another Sky in 2007 (Profile Books). Lucy has a particular interest in literary fiction in translation, and reviews books for various publications, including the Independent, Independent on Sunday and the TLS. She programmes and hosts literary events at the Working Men’s College in Camden and teaches creative writing. She is also a volunteer writing mentor for Write to Life, the creative writing group at Freedom from Torture and edited its most recent anthology, Body Maps, published in June 2011. She has a monthly column in The Literary Review about persecuted writers.
Jason Cooper
Jason is one of the first UK publishers we took on a trip to Spain some 7 or 8 years ago. At the time he was Senior Commissioning Editor at Pan Macmillan and had recently acquired Roberto Bolano’s 2666 which went on to become that author’s break-out success in the English language. His publishing experience includes working for major international literary agencies, running rights departments and commissioning across a wide range of genres and titles. More recently his work has included founding Faber’s Digital publishing unit, its in-house writing programme, the Faber Academy, and playing a key role in driving the company’s growth through innovation.
Thomas Bunstead
Thomas Bunstead is a writer and translator based in East Sussex, England. In 2012 he was one of the British Centre for Literary Translation's mentees, working with Margaret Jull Costa. His translations include the acclaimed Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon, Anton Mallick Wants to Be Happy by Premio Nadal winner Nicolás Casariego, and 'From now on, according to Schoenberg's wishes', an essay by Enrique Vila-Matas which was chosen by dOCUMENTA to feature in its Book of Books. Thomas' own writing has appeared at 3ammagazine, >kill author, Days of Roses, Ready Steady Book, The Paris Review Blog, and in the Independent on Sunday and the TLS.
Nick Caistor
Nick Caistor is a British translator from Spanish and Portuguese. After living for several years in Latin America, on his return to Britain he began to translate fiction by Latin American and Spanish authors. He has now translated some 40 works of fiction, and in 2006 and 2008 was awarded the Valle Inclan prize for translation from Spanish. He has been part of the New Spanish Books project since it started.
Bill Swainson
Bill Swainson read English at Leeds University and has worked in publishing since 1976, at John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, Allison & Busby, Fourth Estate and the Harvill Press. He has also worked as a freelance editor and literary consultant. In 2000 he joined Bloomsbury, a leading independent publisher, where he is currently Senior Commissioning Editor, publishing a wide range of non-fiction and also a list of fiction in translation, including such authors as Javier Cercas, Boualem Sansal, Judith Schalansky, Hasan Ali Toptaș and Juan Gabriel Vásquez. He has been a literary adviser to the British Centre for Literary Translation, a trustee of both the Poetry Society and the Poetry Book Society, and is currently a board member of The Poetry Translation Centre.
Hidden Truth Chronicles is a key work in Calders' writing and represents the discovery, for postwar readers, of an extraordinary storyteller. The author's humour and fantasy had, with the years, gained in intensity, depth and ambiguity, an ambiguity which always permeates fantastic literature, from Poe to Kafka, passing through Pirandello or Bontempelli.
'Una familia ejemplar' is a hilarious satire, a tragicomedy that takes a look at the disproportionate ambition that sometimes makes reasonable people lose their heads, and also a searing critique of great family sagas.
Spain, winter 1939. AMong the hundreds of thousand of people crossing the bordering seeking refuge in France, the Lamana family get separated, hoping to be reunited in the neighbouring country.
Argentina, the 1970s.The unions are overwhelmed by the radical left, and the CEO of a steel plant dies after falling from the helicopter he was travelling in. The briefcase full of money he had with him disappears without trace. The theories about his death are multiplying, as are those on what the money was for. Doing business with union reps? Corrupting them?
Investigating their respective family histories, Gloria and Marcel meet in Riofrío, a small mountain town which in the past was not spared the turmoil of civil war.
After several years living in Paris, Alfredo Gastiasoro returns to Bilbao when he learns that Izarbe has died. His return is meant to be the last homage to the woman he loved, but it will become an investigation of the unsettling circumstances surrounding her death.
23rd February, 1981. A village in Castille surrounded by mountains. Every Monday, seven-year-old Elena goes to her catechism class. One day she and her classmates are unexpectedly urged to leave the classroom and to go home as quickly as they can. A coup d'etat is happening in the country right then.
A new girl, Felisa Wilmer, joins a religious school for girls in the north of Buenos Aires. Recently arrived from London, Felisa becomes the centre of attention thanks to her rebellious attitude and bad behaviour, and her artistic tendencies, her perfect English and her impenetrable and independent character means that she is surrounded by a 'poetic' aura.
