Bruno Blog

NÈSTOR LUJÁN PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL NOVELS

An extraordinary woman who wants to be a surgeon, an impossible love, an insatiable struggle. An enlightening story of the Barcelona of the 14th century.

Barcelona, 1382. Francesca is a fifteen year old Christian girl who helps her grandmother Bonanada to work as a midwife. Her aunt teaches her the secrets of the trade and introduces her to the mastery of the remedial plants, but she does not have enough, and although she lives in a very humble environment, she has the firm determination to become a doctor and a surgeon. There is only one problem: this is a career reserved for men and making a place for herself is almost a folly.

Thanks to her job as a caregiver, she often visits the Call. There she will meet Astruc, a young boy from a group of doctors who wants to study medicine. They both agree to share their knowledge: Francesca will teach him everything she knows about plants and he will give her access to his books. But medicine is not her only passion: Francesca is in love with Martí, her childhood friend, and with this love she will start her adult life, an exciting life full of obstacles, love, betrayals and passions.

Based on a true story and with an absolutely enlightening narrative, Laia Perearnau masterfully takes us to the Barcelona of the 14th century, when illnesses were rife, and makes us vibrate with the life of an extraordinary woman, full of determination, who fought tirelessly against the limits imposed on the women of her time.

Can a love letter change a life or stop a war?

Would you wait for those words until the end of your days?

Madrid, 1936. Aurora has just come of age and works as a nurse in a troubled city that resists the fire and bombs of the war. In this times of violence, she decides to contribute in the Republican front and begins to write letter to a young soldier, Teófilo, thus becoming – like many other women of the time – a war godmother.

In each letter, the young men will find a refuge in which to express the fears and secrets they cannot say aloud while discovering a love they never imagined. However, in a war full of intrigue and espionage, where everyone is a suspect, the written word can be the most dangerous weapon…

When years later, isolated in the silence of the postwar period, Teófilo finds out that Aurora is still alive, he does not hesitate to try to find again the person who, amidst the fire and gunpowder, made love, calm and peace blossom in him.

This story is a tribute to all those women who took the word as a rifle and managed to grow in the line of fire the strength and hope of the soldiers.

More robot-filled adventures and a big robopop star.

“I’m sorry to tell you that Capek and I haven’t yet decided what we want to be when we grow up. At the moment, we know that we want to help robots find a way when their programming fails them, and not end up on the scrapyard.

The thing is, Kylie Robot – of whom, by the way, I am a super-fan – has lost her voice. I love her, I mean, I love her! Can you imagine her ending up in the junkyard in pieces because she can’t sing anymore? She is a robopop superstar who has thousands and thousands of fans and who is at the top of the holovideos. That would be quite a disaster…”

From an initial surprising death, Maria, a girl of only 8 years old in a public bath, the reader will enter a real chain of investigations. From the beginning, the novel takes on a detective tone, in a prose full of intrigue, which at times is clearly reminiscent of Manuel de Pedrolo’s work, in which there is a clear predominance of the dialogue. Without forgetting the detailed descriptions that, in the case of Bennasar, not only serve to bring us closer to the crimes, but also to place us in the most absolute everyday life of the city of Palma, from the streets of the old neighborhoods to the hamburger joints that have been invading us.

In 1982, with just three years, Samir was abandoned by her mother in the beach of El Saler. She covered his eyes and told him: «don’t move, I’ll be back in no time». But she never did. No one knew why she never came back, and that kid ended up living in a juvenile centre without identity and a bunch of memories. Samir grew up between orphans and disinherited of the world but determined to have an opportunity in life. Thirty years after her mother forgot him in that beach, Samir is no longer a defenceless kid but a captain of the Judicial Police of Valencia. Nevertheless, his past will come back mysteriously. A young women’s body was found murdered hours prior in the same place where he was abandoned when he was a kid, it will not seem to be a coincidence. The fact that she wore her name and phone number either. Captain Santos will start an investigation that will become a puzzle where the pieces of his past and his mother’s will end up being crucial to be able to learn the truth about the body. In the end, in the deepest part of himself, Samir has always long for that: that someday her mother came back to him.

Narrated with brilliantly an emotion, the suspense and the plot become in the best to read this book. The author builds the story taking turns between the past and the present in a fluid and rhythmic way, knowing that a novel not only requires a good story but also a powerful writing.