Gata Maula is born, the editorial dream of two booksellers with very good taste

Barcelona"Things don't last forever: if you have a dream you must pursue it," says Aarón Sánchez Tolosa what he thought when in 2022 the historic Geli bookstore in Girona The bookseller has closed the shop for good, after 143 years of history. The bookseller had been there for seven and a half years. Outside the shop he shared his love of good literature with another bookseller, in this case from Librería 22, Cristina Sagrera. "Geli's disappearance spurred us on to finally get our own project going," he says. She left her job. He became part of the team at Librería 22.

Less than three years after Geli's closure, Sagrera and Sánchez Tolosa are presenting the first titles from the publishing house Gata Maula, which will publish between six and eight titles each year in Catalan, mainly translations. "Since a little over a decade ago, a new wave of independent publishers like L'Altra or Males Herbes began to emerge, we have followed them and loved them," says the editor. "Just as there are some literatures that are very well represented in Catalan right now, there are others that are more absent, like Asian literature." The publisher's first title is The Ballad of the Mountain Birds, of Can Xue, a Chinese author who has been in the running for the Nobel Prize in literature for a few years now. "The stories we have chosen have the common denominator of crossing over into the afterlife," explains Sánchez Tolosa. "Can Xue always manages to impact and surprise the reader." Among the first six titles of Gata Maula will also be the excellent novel At dusk, by South Korean Hwang Sok-yong, and The guest cat, by the Japanese Takashi Hiraide. None of the three authors had been translated into Catalan until now. Neither has the Swedish Karolina Ramqvist, whose work will be published Bread and milk, and the Irish Eimear McBride. "There are Irish authors who are making their mark, including Sally Rooney, Claire Keegan, Caroline O'Donoghue and Eimear McBride –admits the editor–. We will make a novel about McBride that is not in Spanish, Strange hotel".

At the moment, Can Xue's stories and Joseph Roth's novel have arrived in bookstores The spider web. "He is an author who reappears from time to time in Catalan but who unfortunately we quickly forget," says Sánchez Tolosa. "This novel from 1923 is a warning cry about the growth of German nationalism at the time. It is a story of rigorous relevance." The name of the publishing house, Gata Maula, responds to the desire to publish titles "that go beyond the norm" and that "have seven lives", like cats: "We want to make books of substance, that work by word of mouth and are republished." A colleague in the sector told the two Girona editors to choose the first five books very carefully: otherwise, they might not publish the sixth. Their good literary taste is demonstrated by the names they will present this year. Now all that remains is for the readers to accompany them.