- I have recently noticed how little I read from Spain, and I don’t mean Spanish-language authors, such as from Latin America, but just Spain. This year I read Tristana by Benito Pérez Galdós, but I feel like I barely scratched the surface with this author, and such lists as this one – The Greatest Spanish Literature of All Time – certainly inspire me to read more Spanish authors. Perhaps some of my readers are very versed in this, but I have only recently discovered that there are many great books and hidden gems. There are novels The Hive (La Colmena) and The Family of Pascual Duarte (La familia de Pascual Duarte) by Nobel Laureate Camilo José Cela, and The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán is also highly praised. When it comes to Javier Marías, I am now less convinced. Though I still want to read his novel A Heart So White, I found myself almost DNFing his book Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me. Though it is beautifully written, I found the story lacking in logic and believability. The situation there was really too preposterous, and I was not at all convinced that the main character was really “trapped” in an impossible situation.
Then, there is Time of Silence by Luis Martín-Santos Ribera. It is said to be “one most important Spanish novels of the twentieth century”, and I have also recently put into my TBR list Eduardo Mendoza’s The City of Marvels, which is “a novel describing the rise of the unspeakable Onofre Bouvila, an honestly self-seeking mafioso who starts in the gutters of Barcelona and leaves a trail of broken egos as he climbs up to his place in the sun” (goodreads). Perhaps I should do a Spanish Literature Challenge, similar to the one I did for Italy. Would you be interested to participate? 🇪🇸
- When I was browsing unusual books, I stumbled across a curious genre of fiction – mathematical fiction, which is broadly any fictional work that is about mathematics or about mathematicians. One book caught my eye – Fantasia Mathematica (edited by Clifton Fadiman), an anthology of stories, poems, problems and essays on mathematical topics. It is very diverse, from short stories, such as by Richard Llewellyn and H. G. Wells, to riddles and poetry. For example, it contains the story Socrates & The Slave from Plato’s works. There, a student asks his teacher how it could be proven that every act of learning is merely a process of recollection, rather than learning, since the immortal soul already knows everything. To prove that, Socrates gave a slave boy, who had no mathematical training, a geometry problem to solve, and led him to the correct answer. Though it is obvious that the boy was prompted to respond correctly and Socrates did not prove the immortality of the soul, the idea that our souls intuitively already know certain things even if we do not know how we know them is thought-provoking. 📐
- Last month, Faber published list “75 Great Plays from the Last 75 Years“, which I found interesting. Apparently, they asked many theatre lovers, including playwrights and staff members, what were their favourite/best plays, and then edited the list to 75 titles (and the list also includes plays not published by Faber). They called it “a celebration of modern theatre”. Normally, I prefer classic plays so I have only read or seen about ten from the list, including two by Brian Friel (Dancing at Lughnasa and Faith Healer). And, some of them I got to know as films first, including A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1972) and A Taste of Honey (1958). The latter I recommend as a great social realist film of 1961 directed by Tony Richardson. The ones I think deserve to be on the list, but aren’t there are Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) by Dario Fo, and The Physicists (1962), The Meteor (1966) and The Visit (1956) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Anyway, the Faber list is great to broaden one’s horizons. 🎭
- I set a goal this year to read more graphic novels (or manga). I used to enjoy them a lot, especially when I lived in Belgium and Italy. I prefer graphic novels with deep stories and intricate artworks, and I read quite a number of them from publication Drawn & Quarterly. I had more misses (Doing Time, The Theory of the Grain of Sand) than hits (The Hunting Accident) this year though, so I am open to recommendations. 💭
Thoughts on Papyrus 
Ramón Perez de Ayala is a Spanish author you should consider. He was a 20th century Spanish diplomat, who was Spain’s Ambassador to the UK for a time. His two best works are:
Tiger Juan. Perez de Ayala in this story contrasts an effeminate Don Juan with a virile anti Don Juan. The title character is an extraordinary creation: angry, bitter, opinionated, self-absorbed, and frankly disturbing. As the story progresses, he mellows, but I won’t give the game away by saying how. The Don Juan character is a travelling salesman known to Tiger Juan, and the relationship of these two very different men is well portrayed.
Belarminio and Apollonio. The title characters are two shoemakers who are bitter rivals.. For most of the book, they don’t speak to each other. One of them fancies himself as a poet, and has written a play; the other thinks himself a great philosopher. The drama kicks of when the daughter of one runs off with the son of the other.
Perez de Ayala’s style is playful and eloquent.
The main problem you’ll have is finding copies at a reasonable price. He is a forgotten author in the English speaking world.
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You are correct very little Spanish lit seems to have risen to the level of “classic” since Garcia Lorca. (Pessoa is Portuguese). I’d never heard of Cela (despite the Nobel).
Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss is my favorite play from the past 75 years, see it in performance if you ever can.
Manga and graphic novels there’s the incredible Watchmen, which I have read several times. I’d be sure to watch Ghost in the Shell, an anime which rewards multiple viewings that should appeal to your literary tastes, with its famous monologue on the boat.
For math lit you can do no better than my poem “Math and the Universe,” an Editor’s Choice in Star*Line. 🙂
https://sfpoetry.org/wp/starline/starline-48-4-fall-2025/#first
You also might check out Oulipo, they use math in a lot of their writings…..
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