A new and ambitious essay publishing house in Catalan is born

BarcelonaFive years after the arrival of Cràter's first book, Cràter's first book, Contes de la becada, by Guy de Maupassant, the publishing project confirms its growing ambition thanks to the boost of a new publishing house, Set Arcs. "I could have started another collection at Cràter or opted for this other path, which in the end seemed the best to me," comments editor Mariona Bosch, who at Set Arcs will team up with the doctor in philosophy, university professor, and politician Jordi Graupera and with filmmaker Ventura Durall, who premiered his latest film last December, who premiered his latest film last December, Supernatural.

"At Set Arcs, we will publish seven books each academic year that will revolve around the same theme, question, or problem — Bosch advances—. We will approach this common point from very different disciplines: scientific essay, social sciences, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, or literary studies. We will try to keep the register between academic essay and popularization, always above self-help." The first theme they will explore in depth over the next twelve months is origin. "The first two titles will be by Agnes Callard and Laura Spinney — she continues—. In Sòcrates, Callard offers a contemporary rereading of the foundational figure of Western thought. She reclaims the idea of the Socratic dialogue, which always poses serious and important questions, even though for a long time it has been associated with satire and irony. Laura Spinney addresses in Proto the origin of languages, incorporating genetic studies for the first time. Until now, it had been discussed mainly from a linguistic perspective and from an archaeological standpoint.

From zero to Shakespeare's modernity

The good eye of the trio of editors will be confirmed with the following additions to the Set Arcs catalog. The Wonder of Life, by Stephen Jay Gould, "is an anthology with the author's best evolutionary biology essays with more popular, yet rigorous, articles on topics he was passionate about, such as baseball," comments Mariona Bosch. Zero. Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife, "explores the mathematical, philosophical, and cultural origins of the number zero," he adds. It starts in Babylon and India and reaches black holes, one of modern physics' star concepts. Dated 2006 and 2000, respectively, Gould and Seife's essays are a testament to Set Arcs' importance "in incorporating in-depth essays, previously unpublished in Catalan, that must be available to read in our language." Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, by Harold Bloom, will be another notable example of this axis. The volume, over 800 pages, was published in English in 1998 and until now could be read in the Spanish version by Tomás Segovia for Anagrama. "Bloom analyzes the modernity of Shakespeare's great characters, who are often introspective and possess great self-awareness," explains the editor, before addressing the third axis of the project, commissioning books from Catalan authors. Set Arcs will debut with Two Anthropologies, by Carles Boix, a professor of political science at Princeton University.

The seventh approach to the concept of origin will be made by Roger Bartra, a Mexican anthropologist and sociologist whose most notable book, Anthropology of the Brain (2006, expanded in 2024), where he explains that "consciousness is not individual, but is fully intertwined with the environment and society," recalls Mariona Bosch. In parallel to the work with Set Arcs, Cràter will continue to combine the publication of classic and contemporary authors, including Sylvia Plath, August Strindberg, Zora Neale Hurston, Yukio Mishima, and the latest Nobel Prize in Literature, László Krasznahorkai, who ceased to be unpublished in Catalan thanks to the translation by Carles Dachs, which the publishing house published of one of his most celebrated novels, Satanic Tango.