Bruno Blog

Maria Barbal Is classic contemporary writter and the author of Stone in a Landslide will travel back to the Lleida Pyrenees in her upcoming novel, It will be published in February during the pre-campaign for Sant Jordi 2019.

To My Scottish Friend is a story about friendship, love, war, memory, and regret. All of these themes come to bear on the life of Benet, whose quiet sensitivity to the world around him and struggle to work out what he wants in life as the years wear on make him an endearing, relatable protagonist. We follow Benet from the cradle to the battlefield and beyond, watching him grow and navigate the various hurdles of both war and peacetime. To My Scottish Friend is written with such tenderness and charm that, by the end of the novel, we cannot help but feel as close to Benet as if we had known him all our lives.

Part of what makes the story of To My Scottish Friend so unique is the way it is told by Barbal. We view Benet’s life not through the eyes of a single narrator, but of several: his family, his acquaintances, an anonymous narrator, and his Scottish friend. We also hear from Benet himself, through excerpts of his letters and his diary scattered throughout the novel. The end result is a fascinating collage of different viewpoints on Benet’s life and character, making Barbal’s novel a varied and thoroughly enjoyable read.

[I could have saved Lorca]

A story about memory and regret, of how everything could have been, but never was.

“I could have saved Lorca.” I heard my grandfather mutter this phrase when I was a child. He was from Granada, his name was Manuel Bonilla Jimenez and he was a quiet man. My parents left me with him some weekends. One day he showed me a gun … I knew that he had fought in the Civil War. Granada … García Lorca … Civil War … It rang a bell, but … what did my silent grandfather have to do with all that? What was a quiet man hiding with his “I could have saves Lorca”? That’s the begining a journey that will tear several veils of a crucial trance of the history of Spain and post-war Catalonia, a trip full of fortuitous encounters, personal events, unique findings, illuminating interviews with glimpses of Dalí, Buñuel and other personalities, various stumbles and discoveries in the human geography of yesterday’s Andalusia and today’s Catalonia that will create an intriguing plot that precipitates the history of Spain in a vibrant collective tale that will resonate in the familiar and personal depths of thousands of readers

Official title: La abuela que cruzó el mundo en bicicleta

This sweet and positive fable is an invitation to discover the treasures life holds for us. To let go from everything that makes us unhappy and to get hold of new and far more thrilling experiences. To see the world as it really is, as we used to see it in those long summer nights when we were chidlren.

A deep and remarkable journey through the eyes of a deeply, loveley main character.

Maru, a 90 year old woman, leads a normal, simple life in Oaxaca, México. She never learned to read, but is full of knowledge. When she discovers that her grandson, whom she has never met, lives in Veracruz, she decides to ride on her bike -her sole posession in the world- and start a journey to meet him. A journy into the world of dreams.

The incredible story of a time where passion and love could be the only answer, and the only cure.

The year is 1918 and the Great War is devastating Europe when Gracia Ballesteros is forced to fly Barcelona without notice. She meets Carter Irvine in Burdeux, a young american man that has enlisted as voluntary to fight in the Old Continent. They fall into a relationship that will need to get over distance and the dangers ahead. In the midst of all, more and more people that are apparently well start dying because of the flu, an epidemic that will terrorize the world.

A novel that, through a love story, transports us to the great film shoots in the brilliant Rome of the 40s and 50s. Cinecittà is a tribute to what was the dream factory of Italy.

The news of the closing of the mythical Cinecittà leads an expert journalist to write a reportage. There he meets Gino, an old man who has worked in these studios all his life, who explains his memories of filming A Farewell to Arms.

Fifty years ago, Charles Vidor travels from NY to Rome to take over the direction of the film after John Huston left the team at the last moment. Jennifer Jones sees in this film her last chance to relaunch her career, and Rock Hudson lives a passionate romance with a young Italian when he leaves the set.

This novel allows the reader to experience the vicissitudes of the Hollywood stars of the 50s, the day to day of the workers and the true soul of Cinecittà.