Once again, FORBES magazine has compiled some of the most important publishing releases of the year. A handful of excellent books from different categories so that the final reading of 2024 is as enriching as it is entertaining.
COUP DE GRACE
Dennis Lehane
Salamander
Well-measured plots and characters, studious dialogues, incisive criticism… This story of a courageous mother who fights to find her daughter is impressive. It shows the most rotten side of a society where racism, mafia and drugs are rampant. Magnificent work.
THE OCCASIONS
Ruben Lardin
Fulgencio Pimentel
Lardín once again shows his great narrative talent (almost without restraint) to deal with the questions, setbacks and reflections that –in his daily life– can besiege a protagonist who, in the first person, could well be the author… or the reader himself.
MOTHER OF ATOMIC HEART
Augustin Fernandez Mallo
Seix Barral
“Memoir is literature or it is nothing,” says the author. And this is it: a profound, beautiful, analytical biographical novel, full of details… Mallo uses family memories about his father to create a universal, close and true story.
THE CALL
Leila Guerriero
Anagram
Guerriero’s journalistic brilliance and her absolute narrative solvency come together in this true portrait of a woman who, after surviving the hellish confinement imposed on her by the Argentine dictatorship, suffered the contempt of her compatriots in exile… Rigor and memory.
THE DAY OF THE WOLF
Antonio Soler
Espasa
Drawing on family memories and silenced but not forgotten recollections, Soler narrates – as if it were a story – the massacre of thousands of people from the Republican side who were fleeing besieged Malaga in 1937. Fear, cruelty and pain come together in a great book.
MONSTER
Daniel Ruiz
Tusquets
With his usual genius, Daniel Ruiz portrays the difficult childhood in a peripheral Andalusian neighborhood in the 80s of a self-conscious boy, a target for bullies and with few resources. A hard coming-of-age story that, with a voice far from conventionalisms, oozes reality.
THE PENINSULA OF EMPTY HOUSES
David Uclés
Siruela
An exceptional novel by this young author, who all critics are already pointing out as the literary revelation of the year. David Uclés spent fifteen years working on a story that, using magical realism, vindicates the memory of his ancestors. With enormous mastery, lyricism and narrative power, he recalls the hard chapters of the Civil War experienced by a family of peasants from Jaén forced to move across the peninsula. The crudeness and ferocity of the conflict is told from such a personal, epic and ingenious perspective that the reader cannot help but be amazed by the echo of great writers that this human map, this accurate historical portrait, exudes. Without a doubt, one of the best books of the year.
THE EXCLAUSTRATE
Alvaro Pombo
Anagram
Loneliness, guilt, God, fear, morality, doubts… The 2024 Cervantes Prize winner shows off all his weapons in this novel, an example of his particular tortuous and reflective style, in which a former monk, withdrawn and already elderly, will be the object of revenge from a novice.
TRAIN TO SAMARKAND
Guzel Yakhina
Cliff
Emotion, horror and historical accuracy come together here, marking Yakhina as a worthy heir to the great Russian authors. In 1923, 500 orphaned children are taken by train from Kazan to Samarkand to avoid famine. A fascinating odyssey.
BAUMGARTNER
Paul Auster
Seix Barral
In his posthumous book, Auster once again sets out to prove that he is (and has been, almost since he began) one of the best writers in the world. Baumgartner, widowed and almost retired, looks back to relieve the weight of everyday life and try to revive lost love.
BIOGRAPHY OF X
Catherine Lacey
Alfaguara
The death of X, an acclaimed artist and writer, leads his widow to investigate the unknown past of the woman he loved. Silences, lies and shadows make up a puzzle, a mixture of genres, which is exciting, lucid, well-measured in intrigue and magnetic in its plot.
