Tag-Archive for ◊ adults ◊

Author:
• Sunday, February 17th, 2013

Emili Rosales was born in 1968 in Spain’s Sant Carles de la Ràpita. He spent his childhood and adolescence in his home town before moving to Barcelona to study philology. He worked as a literature teacher and translator and currently is editor and contributor to the newspapers Avui and La Vanguardia. He lives in Barcelona and is a member of the Association of Catalan Language Writers.

Emili Rosales has written two poetry books:
Cities and Sea, published in 1989 and The Days and You, published in 1991.
He has also written four novels to date:
The Beach House, published in 1995, Lord of The Earth in 1997, While Barcelona sleeps in 1999 and The Invisible City in 2005.

The Invisible City became a best seller and has been translated into twenty five languages. The English version was published in 2009. It won the prestigious Catalan literary prize: The Sant Jordi Prize, was selected among the five best novels in Spain in 2006 and was short-listed in 2007 for the Prix Médicis Etranger in France.

Emili Rossell, the main character in the novel, is a young gallery owner in Barcelona, born and raised in Sant Carles de la Ràpita – like the author himself. One day he receives an anonymous parcel containing a copy of an 18th century manuscript written in Italian and entitled: The Memoirs of the Invisible City, written by Andrea Roselli, the Italian architect of king Charles III of Spain, who reigned from 1759 to 1788. This manuscript reawakens Rossell’s great childhood interest in the mystery of the so-called “Invisible City” in his home town, a riddle that even the adults around him couldn’t solve.

Emili Rossell mentions the invisible city of his “childhood games” out of the blue to his school friend, Armand Coll. After examining his encyclopedia, Armand informs his friend that: “Sant Carles de la Ràpita constitutes a mystery within the failed projects of the Enlightenment. It was first designed to be a grand, new city, but at some point the project came to a halt, no one knows exactly why… What was not yet a reality, soon became a pile of ruins. These are the ruins where you and your friends played and scattered pigeons”.

The author skillfully connects the past and present by constructing two parallel, intertwining plots in an architectural way. On the one hand, the aborted plans and unfulfilled dream of king Charles III of Spain and on the other hand, the remaining ruins of this ambitious scheme in the Ebro delta two centuries later. The relics of this unfinished work becomes the playground for the child, Emili Rossell and his friends, who are unaware of the history of these vestiges.

King Charles III’s biggest ambition was to replace Madrid with a new capital which he wanted built around the Ebro delta in Catalonia under the name of Sant Carles de la Ràpita. He wanted a similar city to the majestic Saint Petersburg, built by Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725) on the banks of the Neva river.

This colossal plan does not materialise because of jealousy and political court intrigues. The senior royal court architect, Francesco Sabatini, who is put in charge of this gigantic project, takes the young Andrea Roselli under his wing. Everything changes when Sabatini discovers, through Tiepolo’s painting of Cecilia – intended as a present by her for her ex lover, Roselli – the romance between his wife, Cecilia and his trusted protégé.

In a jealous rage, Sabatini confronts Roselli and promises him that he will ensure that “his new city” will never exist, and “the privileges he had enjoyed so far will be taken from him”. Roselli knows that Francesco Sabatini is capable of persuading the king to bring the project to a halt, which he does.

What was destined to become a new capital, an ideal, perfect, great artistic and commercial city promoting trade between Spain and America, instead becomes a fishermans’ town. Sabatini has effectively destroyed Roselli’s career and promising future as well as alienating him. Nevertheless, some unfinished buildings will remain until the twentieth century as a witness to this agitated period.

The story also includes the mystery of the lost painting by the famous eighteenth century Venetian master, Giambattista Tiepolo. It goes missing soon after his death and Emili Rossell’s beautiful old friend, Sofia Mendizàbal, is desperately trying to find it two centuries later, by pleading the help of Rossell.

The plot contains the enigma around the hidden identity of Emili Rossell’s father. A secret well kept by his family and which haunted him during his childhood. He learns at an early age never to ask about the father he has never known, feeling a heavy hidden sense of shame and culpability. He loses interest as an adult but eventually discovers his father’s identity towards the end of the novel.

As we embark on an intimate journey with Andrea Roselli and Emili Rossell, we discover that they both have things in common such as a complicated relationship with women, whether it’s Cecilia with Andrea Roselli or Ariadna, Chloe or Sofia with Emili Rossell. Another thing they both share is having to settle accounts with their own past.

The Invisible City is an interesting, thrilling and intriguing story with an elaborate plot that manages to bring all the mysterious loose threads together in the end. There is a useful and abundant description of architecture. It’s a good insight into king Charles III of Spain’s reign and no doubt a great amount of research and maybe traveling by the author was needed in order to situate his novel in historical context. But most important of all it is the hymn of praise to Emili Rosales’ native home town, Sant Carles de la Ràpita.

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Author:
• Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Diana Evans was born in London but lived part of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria. She studied Media at the University of Sussex and obtained a Masters degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia.

She was a dancer before turning to journalism as a feature writer and critic for Marie Claire, The Independent, The Observer, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

Diana Evans’ first novel 26 a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers in the same year and received a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award. She was also short listed for the Whitbread First Novel and Commonwealth Best First Book Awards.

26 a has been translated into several languages. The Wonder, published in 2009, is Diana Evans second novel. Diana Evans lives in London, England.

26 a, Diana Evan’s first novel dedicated to her twin sister, Paula, is semi autobiographical, having lived the loss of Paula, who committed suicide in 1998 while a young adult. The story takes place mainly in Neasden, London and partly in Nigeria.

26 Waifer Avenue, Neasden, in North West London is the home of the Hunter family. 26 a is the loft where the identical twin-children and soul mate, Georgia and Bessi Hunter live and chose to barricade themselves from the outside world. They created their own haven where nobody was allowed in without knocking and where they could discuss important matters without interference.

They managed to secure their den from the oppressive atmosphere down below, in the house, with their homesick, melancholic, Nigerian mother, Ida, who discourses with “spirits” and their depressed, English, alcoholic father, Aubrey, who hasn’t learned “how to master his demons” and who turns from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde, when he is drunk. Their elder sister Bel nurtured them and their younger sister, Kemy, was eager to become part of their secluded world as their third twin.

They built a childhood universe of make believe, where they felt they could fulfil their innocent dreams. Unfortunately, reality caught up with them as they became adults. They had to learn to break the unbreakable bond, their dependent magical relationship and grow apart by accepting that the “twoness” becomes a “oneness”.

A nostalgic, moving, bittersweet tale about searching for personal as well as cultural identity, skillfully written with a great deal of feeling and sensitivity. The poignantly dark, supernatural ending to the story creates a link to the emotionally two petrified furies of the beginning of the novel and contrast with the humoristic narration in between.

In the Observer issue of 6th February 2005, Diana Evans wrote under “My other half”, “A personal essay on twinness”, how after the suicide of her twin sister Paula, Diana felt her sister’s presence haunting her everywhere she went, even in her dreams. She was even speaking at times like her sister with the same voice, finding herself laughing the same way, which made her feel spooky.

Diana Evans felt that she was now living her life for two persons, her twin sister has always been part of her and remains very much so, even after her death. She went on to say that being a twin does not end when one of you disappears, “because there is never really only one of you. Once a twin, always a twin”.