Antoni Mus, ultralocal joy
The first piece of good news of the year (a Christmas gift) is that the novel is available again. Bubotasby Antoni Mus, which had not been reprinted since its first edition in 1978. Antoni Mus—who was born in Manacor in 1925 and died in 1982—must be one of the Catalan writers of his time who has been most completely forgotten. He was awarded prizes such as the Víctor Català Prize for the novel Life and miracles of Aineta of the Mattressesor Sant Jordi, for The lady. Of The ladyIndeed, a film adaptation was made, which Mus never saw (it premiered in 1987), and which caused a stir due to its erotic scenes. It was directed by Jordi Cadena, with Sílvia Tortosa in the lead role, supported by Hermann Bonnín and Alfred Luchetti.
However, Bubotas This is what many readers—starting with Josep M. Llompart, who contributed a very enthusiastic prologue—consider to be Antoni Mus's best novel, and now we should celebrate its reissue by Món de Llibres, the small publishing house born from the bookstore of the same name, a kind of Shangri-La found in the books of Mangers. This isn't a nostalgic reissue: years later, the novel retains all the power, all the irreverence, all the wicked humor, and all the taste for excess that make it, today, as explosive and devilishly funny as it was the moment it was written. It's not that it remains relevant, as they say: it's that time has been kind to it, and today Bubotas It reads like a concentrated dose of fresh, top-quality spite, a satire with a libertarian spirit that once exposed Francoist morality but is perfectly valid today for warding off the many ghosts that haunt us.
Bubotas It recounts the vicissitudes of the owners of an estate called Retana and the community of characters who swarm around it, a small world traversed by the basest—and most human—passions and also by the bloody consequences of the Civil War. A world of tragedy and grotesque absurdity, which, as Llompart suggests, has points of contact with Espriu the storyteller, but with a sensual, raw, exalted style that is the antithesis of any form of correctness and, above all, any possibility of boredom. A son of Antoni Mus (who earned his living as director of Perlas Mayorica) commented in an interview, regarding this new edition of the book, that his father's literary world began and ended in Manacor. This very localism now works in its favor and transforms Bubotas in a caricature of human misery capable of shaking readers today and everywhere. I hope it's a success: it will mean we're not entirely fooled. And I hope Mundo de Libros reprints Antoni Mus's other books: meanwhile, Bubotas It is an urgent recommendation, burning brightly on every page.
