In search of a new generation of readers for Jesús Moncada

BarcelonaJesús Moncada (Mequinenza, 1941 - Barcelona, ​​​​2005) was one of the most important writers of European literature from the mid-20th century. This is demonstrated by the seventeen translations (into German, English, Aragonese, Spanish, Danish, Slovenian, French, Galician, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Serbian and Vietnamese) of his Catalan and looked at you as if you were a wretch," says editor Maria Bohigas, alma mater from Club Editor. The writer's sudden death at the age of 63 cut short his work and also changed its reception.

"Moncada has never stopped being published in Catalonia; he has escaped the phenomenon of being out of print, but his novels entered a period of limbo and purgatory," explains Bohigas. Twenty years after the author's death, the publisher wants to celebrate and vindicate him. It will do so with a new edition of Moncada's most emblematic work, Towpath, which includes afterwords by Mònica Batet and Artur Garcia Fuster, as well as illustrations, diagrams, and unpublished writings by the author from his personal archive. Club Editor has also organized a series of events that it has called towpaths in Mequinenza, Amposta, Tortosa, Girona, Lérida, and Barcelona.

"Since his death, a new generation of readers has emerged who didn't experience Moncada when he was alive. We want to mobilize them to come into contact with his work," says Bohigas. What will the new public discover in this classic about the end of the old town of Mequinenza? "A writer who is a formidable hybrid between the 19th and 20th centuries. His work delves into an entire society, with an enormous profusion of characters and stories, in the vein of Dickens and Balzac. And, at the same time, he is an author of the late 20th century: in the novel, nothing is stable. Memory and imagination are memories, and imagination are memories, and imagination are memories." the publisher.

Systematic and successful

As for the new edition of Towpath, Club Editor has sought to provide it with special material that accompanies the novel. Five crushes and half a spell, an afterword chronicling the four times he fell in love with the novel. Artur Garcia Fuster, a philologist and scholar of Moncada's work, has also selected a series of documents from the writer's personal archive to complement the book. He also wrote an afterword in which he explores the author's literary qualities and creative process.

When he died, Moncada's archive passed into the hands of his sister Rosa Maria, who gave it to the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The writer had explicitly asked his sister that all those materials not be published. In fact, when he finished a novel, the writer systematically deleted all the drafts he had made. For many years, all the documentation has been saved, and now it's being published with the aim of showcasing the author's way of working. "Moncada works very systematically and successfully. There are materials in the archive that demonstrate how all the chapters are very well thought out and follow an internal logic," Garcia Fuster emphasizes.

For two years, Club Editor has been pushing the mission of incorporating Moncada's work into its catalog and putting it back into circulation within the collection. Novelists' Club, which includes other classics such as Víctor Català and Mercè Rodoreda. In 2023 he published Shaking memory (1997) and Stories of the Left Hand (1973), reissued in 2024 The Frog Cafe (1984) and between 2026 and 2028 it plans to launch The gallery of statues (1992), Astonished skulls (1999) and Dante Inc. The latter is an unpublished novel by Moncada that will be published in a special format, making it clear that it is an unfinished work, of which the writer had only completed 25%. "It will be a title for scholars and those interested in Moncada, but it cannot be understood as a new book but rather as a testimony to the writing process," Garcia Fuster explains.