Report from Barcelona: from the desk of Rebecca Pawel

When Rebecca Pawel told me she was going to Spain to attend the first European Crime novel conference (as well as promote the translated edition of her first novel, The Edgar Award-winning DEATH OF A NATIONALIST) I asked her to send in some dispatches from her trip, figuring that it would be well worth it to get a sense of the crime fiction world in other countries other than the US, Canada and the UK. She graciously obliged, and her first report appears below.

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MES LLIBRES, MES LLIURES

I thought of a lot of possible titles for this, my first guest-blog. “What’s new, Barcelona?” and “Homage to Catalonia” were definitely in the running, but finally I decided on adopting the official slogan of the Barcelona Year of the Book, which appears on all of the signs hanging from the streetlights in this city, which I find myself falling in love with more and more every time I visit. “Mes llibres, mes lliures” means (roughly) “More books, More freedoms.” It’s a nice sentiment, and also an untranslatable wordplay, since “llibres” and “lliures” (respectively “books” and “liberties”) are pronounced identically in Catalan. (“YEE-bras” rhymes with “zebras”).

And that brings me to Catalan, which any self-respecting guide to Barcelona will say a few words about. First: it’s a language, not a dialect. The oldest written works date back to the middle ages, and it’s been in continuous use since, including a thriving publishing industry, something which the guides to the Year of the Book are careful to point out. Catalan is also the closest living relative of Provencal, Occitan, and the languages of Languedoc, so anyone who did a degree in Medieval French literature (or has a pretty strong grounding in French and Spanish) should be able to read it without too much trouble. Anyone interested in Catalan authors should read Mercé Rodoreda’s THE TIME OF THE DOVES and the poetry of
Salvador Espriu whose “Assaig de Cantic en el temple” (“Attempt at a Canticle for the Temple”) is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful poems I’ve ever read, and one which speaks to an old debate of mine with David.

So, ok, what am I doing here, wasting your time and Sarah’s blog with digressions about strange little languages? It so happens that the nice people at Ediciones B offered to pay for my hotel if I came to have the Spanish edition of my book presented at the First Conference of the European Detective Novel organized by David Barba and Sergio Vila San-Juan. They were promising some heavy-hitters (Henning Mankell, Andrea Camillieri, Donna Leon, Petros Markaris, among others) so I came. Sadly, Mankell and Camillieri cancelled at the last minute to health problems, but it’s still an impressive line-up, including some Spaniards whose books I like (Lorenzo Silva and Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett come to mind). The conference doesn’t actually start until this afternoon, so I don’t get to start mingling with stars until later, but I thought I’d write a little getting aquainted post first.

I arrived Tuesday, and I’ve been having the time of my life. I’m used to being recognized as the promising author of a nice little literary mystery or two, with modest sales, from a prestigious (but hardly powerful) publisher. Ediciones B is a Goliath of Spanish publishing, and I arrived to discover that their publicity people had set up a daunting schedule for me (so much for hanging out on La Rambla and going shopping). I have now done more radio and newspaper interviews than I can remember, and am free to write now only because my noon appointment today was cancelled. Annoyingly, I have another interview with COM radio scheduled at 4:30, which means I’m going to miss the 4:00 round table at today’s conference: “Dublin to Moscow” defining the northern European crime novel, where Barbara Nadel is going to talk about “mixed cultures and the contemporary British novel,” Alexandra Marínina is going to discuss “the detective novel in post-Communist Russia, and K.O. Dahl will represent “the current scandinavian detective novel.” (Erin Hart is also going to be there talking about Ireland, but like me, she’s here under slightly false pretences.)

The good news is that I get to go to the FIRST round table of the day, which is the “Mediterranean detective novel” (as opposed to the “northern arc” of the second session). Southern Europe is represented by the charming and urbane Petros Markaris (recommended by Sarah in a previous post), the Spaniard, Francisco González Ledesma, and Donna Leon, who will presumably hold down the Italian end of things even without Camillieri.

The conference is supposed to last for three days. Today, obviously, is devoted to an attempt to define the common characteristics (if any) of the European crime novel. (A couple of people have asked me to compare European and American trends, and my response is invariably that the American genre is so fragmented into sub-genres that’s it’s impossible to speak of a panorama of the American crime novel. But anyone who wants to make intelligent comments is welcome. I promise I’ll attribute them if anyone asks me again.) Tomorrow’s theme is the crime novel as social commentary, with a nice mix of newer authors from France and Germany and a retrospective of how the Spanish crime novel changed during the country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, with an homage to Barcelona’s own Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. (Also a session called “Sex, Lies and Newspaper Articles” about the relationship between crime fiction and the press, which sounds pretty interesting.) Saturday various authors are going to present their books in libraries around the city. Sunday I go home.

I’ll try to send more updates soon. Sorry this is so disorganized. But look on the bright side: this is the FIRST European Crime Novel conference. With any luck at all it will be a huge success, and next year they’ll have to invite Americans to compare the American scene with the European scene, and some of us will get to spend a cool week in Barcelona. Isn’t being a crime writer cool?

P.S. Any writers/countries/themes you guys particularly want to hear about? Post and tell me, and I can do little “author profiles” in future posts if you like. Or do you want to hear about publishing or press or what?