3 best books by Manuel Vicent

There are two authors on the current Spanish literary scene who stand out for a balance that is not easy to achieve, the elegance of their forms, their beauty and a narrative that transmits emotions and sensations. What have been novels created for demanding readers.

One of those two cited is Javier Marías. I bring up the other author today to recommend what for me are the three best books by him, and it is none other than Manuel Vincent.

In Manuel's case, the command of language comes to him by definition. With his triple humanistic degree (Law, Philosophy and Journalism), and this is indeed a true hat trick, it can be understood that the knowledge of the natural environment of narrative has him very fertile and cultivated.

And when it happens that like Manuel Vicent, you end up opting for journalism, it happens that writing books is already there, at your fingertips.

Manuel Vicent found what to tell (something basic for a true writer, beyond the canned and prefabricated editorials and media characters) and he had the time to tell it. And everyone so grateful that it was so, hey.

3 recommended novels by Manuel Vicent

Ballad of cain

A beautiful title for a wonderfully heterogeneous composition. Back and forth scenarios, characters intertwined by the basic feeling that the spirit of Cain runs like a current through all time and place.

The ballad of Cain is a melancholic melody, which as soon as it pushes you towards tears as it pushes you like a spring in the face of injustice.

Summary: From the biblical Antiquity of the desert of Genesis to the asphalt of New York, everything sails in the hearts of mortals, in a sea of ​​sweetness. In this novel, Ballad of Cain, lost paradises and mythical cities, melodies of the soul and sensations of the flesh are mixed.

Manuel Vicent reminds us how the profile of the fratricide merges with our memory, transgresses time and lives wandering the earth reincarnating in successive figurations.

Ballad of cain

Regatta

The regatta, one of the last works of Manuel Vicent has two readings. Or three or more, depending on the reader-reader. It is what has the paradise that was granted to us on Earth.

We can all participate in it to the extent that we want to believe in appearances or know how to appreciate the ultimate realities. And literature, especially in the hands of an author like Don Manuel Vicent, is the perfect tool to lead us in a kind of tragicomedy of characters in search of their friendliest destiny.

Summary: That great yearned for, paradise on Earth, could well be a place like Circea, the space that the author's imagination presents us on the shores of a dazzling Mediterranean, where Dora Mayo enjoys opulence to the point of excess happiness .

Dora hoped to escape in a regatta through the docile Mediterranean, tamed for posh and nouveau riche. But in the end he is left without a mentor and without a ticket for the boat. And he ends up returning to Madrid, looking in defeat for a new place from which to believe in something again, but with his soul burdened by that vital parenthesis on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The regatta finds new participants and begins its hedonistic log. The eyes of a writer provide a counterpoint to so much fatuity of characters without soul or scruples, at least in appearance. Although with the weight of their trivial existences matching their contradictions and selfishness.

But everyone knows they are vulnerable. And in the moments in which they assume their irrelevant presence, be it in front of a majestic sunrise or in front of the sudden briskness of the sea, they evoke their misfortunes and discover their miserable defenses with which they try to cover the void.

The horizon of the Mediterranean will see the birth of new days until the last one that remains. Until that dawn without admirers, that awakening without consciousness; the day in which the authentic Mediterranean appears eternal for everyone. And silence will silence the last echoes of the farce of our lives.

Regatta

Ava at night

One of the most repeated anecdotes is that of the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín who left scared after a passionate encounter with Ava Gadner. She, the great actress, was surprised to see him rush out of the hotel room and asked him where he was going. He turned and elatedly explained that where he was going to go, tell him!

Well know Manuel Vincent that Ava Gardner's arrival in Spain in the sixties was an earthquake for the cultural and political world of those days. Because the actress breathed fresh air into society, longings for freedom confessed in petit committee by almost everyone.

David, a young man who has spent the first years of his life breathing the Mediterranean air, leaves his city to settle in Madrid and fulfill a dream: meet Ava Gardner and become a film director. Upon his arrival, he presented himself at the Cinematography School determined to pass the entrance exams.

It is the early sixties and in Spain a whole world related to art, cinema and literature enjoys nights full of glamor, fun and extraordinarily free. Movie nights that are followed by days in which the reality of the country is drowned covered by the dark and repressive patina of the Franco dictatorship.

Fiction and reality intersect in this novel set in the recent history of Spain. With his usual mastery, Manuel Vicent portrays in Ava at night the unstable border between a dark and declining time and another that, with the first winds of change, is already beginning to appear on the horizon.

Ava at night

Other works by Manuel Vicent

They are from sea

Once again the sea as a background, as a setting or as an argument, depending on the scene that corresponds. As Serrat said, it is what is born in the Mediterranean. Summary: Son de Mar is a novel of love, shipwrecks and returns. All the dead return if the lover calls them with the necessary force.

The protagonist of this novel is a castaway who returns after ten years, but this fact also happens every day on the asphalt of the city. According to the resurrection manual, the first requirement for resurrection is to be alive, even if life immerses you every day in the depths of the seas. In this case there will always be a lover who calls you from any shore and you will have the need to return to it.

They are from sea
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