We start the season with a long-awaited and special recommendation. Albert Villaró returns, an author that many of you were waiting for. This new work, Made in Villaró, has once again an impeccable literary style and this time presents us with a commercial theme with a historical background. Those of you who fell in love with ELS AMBAIXADORS (Premi Pla 2014) will be caught up in the story of LA COMPANYIA NÒRDICA (Columna), his new novel.

I openly admit that, at the beginning, when Albert was talking to me about his new project, I couldn’t really understand what it was about. This is what happens when the writer has his work in his head, but only he has it clear. Nevertheless, once you have read it, you perfectly understand this incredible world that the author has developed. Besides, you get hooked in an addictive way until its end.

Here I leave you with a small summary of this novel, which is already among the best sellers and has only been in bookstores for a couple of weeks. 

An archivist finds W. Urlich’s diary in a lady’s garage. This manuscript is the story told in LA COMPANYIA NÒRDICA, modified and ordered by its editor, the archivist himself. We are in 1837, in the middle of the Carlist war in Spain. Urlich is a young Prussian who comes to the country to fight for the Carlist cause, escaping from a legitimate murder, committed in a duel. The young man decides to go and fight in Catalonia, far from the court, and crosses the border into Andorra with a smuggler. When he reaches the camp of the Carlist troops he is sent to “solve a delicate matter”, which requires someone with studies. The situation is as follows: a mail convoy has been intercepted and all the soldiers killed. The liberals accuse the Carlists, but they assure that they have not been killed. Urlich arrives on the scene and meets his fellow expeditionaries: Mina and Osinalde. They all come from different sides, but a sort of truce is signed in order to investigate the case.

The magic and the music will be the two important points in this story to discover the mystery. Villaró surprises us again with a masterfully written text and with a mixture of genres so well done that it is difficult to label and explain. However, once you start reading LA COMPANYIA NÒRDICA, you can’t stop.