Jessica Crispin at PBS had a brief list of Spanish language authors (from the translator Anne McLean) you might have heard about, but should look into. It is a brief list but definitely worth looking at. One I’m looking at is Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas. It was a huge hit in Spain and occasionally controversial. I was happy and surprised to learn it was going to be published in English. As a Spanish fried asked, are English speakers going to understand it? I’m not sure, but if you like history and different ways of writing it, the book will be worth the read.

“Anatomy of a Moment”
by Javier Cercas
(will be released February 2011 by Bloomsbury)

“Three of the writers I translate are actually favorites of Vargas Llosa’s,” McLean wrote me, including Javier Cercas. McLean has translated Cercas before, and this latest is “about the 1981 attempted coup in Spain, which won the National Prize for Narrative the day after the Nobel was arrived.”