For 46 years, the Sant Joan prize has recognized narrative work —fiction or otherwise— and throughout this almost half-century of history, it has recognized authors with long careers such as Vicenç Villatoro, Maria de la Pau Janer, Baltasar Porcel and Carme Riera, but it has also discovered, especially recently, voices such as those of Àlvar Caixal, Alba Gómez Gabriel and Aida Sunyol. Convened by the Fundació Antigues Caixes Catalanes and BBVA and endowed with 35,000 euros, the prize has been split into two categories this year and, without initial intention, has incorporated two new voices into the Catalan literary system, Jordi Marrón and Laura Pallarés.

"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven straight out of that holy mountain / top by the lightning.". This is how the new Catalan version of Homer's Odyssey begins, one of the foundational epic poems in the history of literature, translated by Pau Sabaté and just published by Bernat Metge Universal, a label from Abacus. The classic tells the journey of the heroic and cunning Odysseus (or Ulysses, depending on the version), after the Trojan War – an episode dealt with in the Iliad, Homer's other literary monument–, with the aim of reaching the island of Ithaca, reuniting with his wife and son, Penelope and Telemachus, and reclaiming his throne. It is one of the books "most known and influential, subject to countless readings, rewrites and interpretations," comments the editor in the preface of the volume, Roger Aluja. Why does it continue to amaze readers and motivate new adaptations, such as the one that filmmaker Christopher Nolan is about to premiere, almost three thousand years after its conception?

On October 23, 1969, the telephone rang in the room of the Tunisian hotel where Samuel Beckett and his partner, Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil, were on vacation. She answered, and a spokesperson for the Swedish Academy informed her that her husband, the author of such acclaimed plays as Waiting for Godot (1952) and Endgame (1955), had just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. "What a catastrophe!" he exclaimed. With these two words, he summarized the discomfort with which Beckett lived the award: he did not go to Stockholm to collect it, he did not keep the financial compensation, nor did he allow himself to write anything for a good while, until the world had managed to forget that his work had deserved such a prestigious distinction.

In the novels and stories of the Argentine Patricio Pron (Rosario, 1975) nothing is simple or obvious, but readers who delve into them will find a sophistication, both in form and content, that will reward them handsomely. In En todo hay una grieta y por ella entra la luz (Anagrama, 2026), the life of the poet, filmmaker, and artist Benjamin Fondane (1898-1944) motivates the initial two-page paragraph, but Pron immediately dynamites his plans: the rest of the novel is a succession of notes and footnotes that cover the year the writer himself spent in New York and stimulate reflections on climate change, gentrification, the rise of authoritarian discourses, contemporary art, and romantic relationships.

For decades, Biel Mesquida (Castelló de la Plana, 1947) has been inviting readers to delve into all the nuances of the "censored perfume" of freedom, whether sexual or political. On the evening he received the 58th Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, the verses of Lluita de classes, one of the agile and radiant poems from El bell país on els homes desitgen els homes –written in 1974 but unpublished until 1985–, once again resonated at the Palau de la Música with the elegant diction of the poet Adrià Targa. "You are a creature, fierce creature, playing with my hips, / biting them, while I knelt, pushed and compelled by your frenzy and / this desire to sink into the beautiful hole of my anus": thus, the urgent connection between the lyrical self and the "disheveled boy" of the commissions still sounds forcefully, an oasis of free love amidst the national-Catholic and Francoist darkness.

Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana has announced that it is beginning a new phase two and a half years after going through a delicate moment, which resulted in a reduction of staff through an employment regulation file (ERO) to dismiss 15 people. After managing to overcome the latest crisis, and coinciding with its sixtieth anniversary, the editorial conglomerate has made public its new business strategy, which bets "on education, on knowledge in Catalan (also in digital environments) and on the international projection of the catalog".

"Due to a family emergency, Rosalía has to postpone her upcoming concerts in Miami and Orlando", promoter Live Nation communicated this Thursday. The singer was scheduled to perform this Thursday and Saturday at Miami's Kaseya Center and next Monday at Orlando's Kia Center.

"I am alive. My husband, Paul Auster, is dead." Thus begins Ghost Stories (Edicions 62 / Seix Barral, 2026; translated by Jordi Martín Lloret), the memoir that Siri Hustvedt (Minnesota, 1955) has needed to write after the "horrible years" that followed the diagnosis of lung cancer in the author of The New York Trilogy and Leviathan. The volume reconstructs the 43 years of relationship between Siri and Paul in chapters that advance and retreat in time to show the difficult moment the author was going through. Hustvedt's urgent yet reflective narrative combines with the last texts Auster wrote, a series of letters intended so that his grandson Miles –born months before the writer's death– can one day know what kind of family he has grown up in.

Singer Dua Lipa married actor Callum Turner this Sunday in London in a ceremony attended only by family and eight of the couple's closest friends.

Colm Tóibín (Enniscorthy, 1955), to be able to say his piece about Mercè Rodoreda –an author he has been reading for decades–, has found a gap in his extremely tight schedule and has crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Los Angeles. The author of novels such as Brooklyn and The Magician –both in Catalan from the Amsterdam publishing house– has been the last guest of the exhibitionRodoreda, a forest, which closed its doors a few days ago at the CCCB. 81,880 people have visited it since December, a milestone that has made it the seventh most visited exhibition in the history of the Barcelona venue and the most successful one focused on literature, surpassing those programmed for Claudio Magris, Salvador Espriu and W.G. Sebald.

"We can raise no other witness than that of powerlessness. The only hope is the improbable. We must resist," the philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin declared less than two months ago in a long interview in Le Monde, the last of the public appearances he was able to make before his death, in Paris, at the age of 104, after a prolific and highly recognized career spanning eight decades. Morin lamented "the catastrophic process underway" caused by actions such as those of "Trump and Netanyahu." Despite his concern "about the neo-authoritarian regression spreading throughout the world," the thinker — one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century — stated that he continued to "believe in humanity despite doubting it" and called for the urgent activation of "a conscious regenerationism of the identity of origin and the shared destiny of all humans.

Although she hasn't lost hope of becoming a "skater, pianist, dancer, and screenwriter for Larry David," Marta Pasqual (Girona, 1983) combines teaching in secondary school, where she teaches French literature, with writing novels as interesting as L'àngel que em mira (Empúries, 2026), the third she has published since debuting in fiction with El malaventurat senyor Clauss (Empúries, 2022). After winning the Just M. Casero prize with La casa dels caps de setmana (Empúries, 2023), Pasqual presents a story centered on a 60-year-old family man, Isaac, who suffers a domestic accident that leaves him in a coma. This starting point allows the author to combine the account of this decisive moment in the protagonist's life with the flood of memories, both good and painful, that visit him during his convalescence.

Reality insists on changing the plans of novelist Richard Ford (Jackson, 1944). If a couple of years ago, coinciding with the publication of the fifth and last book starring Frank Bascombe, Be mine (2023; Sé mía in the Spanish translation published by Anagrama), he hinted that he was giving up writing, he is in Barcelona presenting a new work, How I got on (2026; En palabras sencillas in Spanish by Feltrinelli), an essay of about a hundred pages that starts with a stimulating question: how can we live decently in a world where politics tends to be dishonest?

One of the most peculiar rituals of rural Galicia is the one that ends at the sanctuary of Santo André de Teixido, located in the municipality of Cedeira, in the province of A Coruña. “To San Andrés de Teixido goes the dead who did not go alive,” says a well-known saying. "He who does not go in life goes when he is dead," recalls David Roas (Barcelona, 1965), professor of literary theory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and author of a dozen books of fantastic stories – a genre to which he has also dedicated numerous studies – the latest of which is Territorios" (Páginas de Espuma, 2026).

"As soon as the storm calms down, I will sacrifice myself," proclaimed this Thursday, with a serene voice, the Turk Adnan Özer (Tekirdag, 1957) at the beginning of the 41st International Poetry Festival of Barcelona in an almost full Palau de la Música.

"If you'll take one piece of advice, don't miss this book," he assured a few days ago Keret appears punctually on his computer screen in Tel Aviv, the city where he grew up and where he still lives and teaches creative writing. It's eleven in the morning, but he's been up for hours: he has a habit of going out at a quarter past seven to take a walk on the beach, which is ten minutes from his home. "I'm sorry I haven't been to Barcelona in so long. Maybe with the next book they'll invite me," he admits, before offering a small sample of his irony. "For now, with things the way they are in my country, it's normal for you to be afraid of someone like me coming."

"Iberia resembles a bull's hide stretched from West to East in length, with the front parts facing East, and from North to South in width. It is approximately six thousand stadia in length; in width, in the widest band, it is about five thousand, although there are places below three thousand, especially in the Pyrenees, which are on the eastern side." These words serve as an introduction to the third book of the seventeen that make up the ambitious Geography of Strabo (c.63 BC–24 AD), focused on exploring the current Iberian Peninsula more than 2,000 years ago. The author delves into its main cities, temples, and rivers, but also into the peoples that inhabited it, among whom were the Astures, the Lusitanians, the Celtiberians, the Cerretani, and the Layetani. What did the ancient Greeks know about us? To what extent have we changed?

Although she has to use crutches due to a recent fall, Marta Pessarrodona (Terrassa, 1941) retains the energy and enthusiasm that have accompanied her for decades. She opens the door to her home in Valldoreix once again to ARA for a double reason: she has been chosen as the opening speaker for the new edition of the Barcelona Poesia festival, which takes place from May 14 to 21, and she is presenting a new poetry book, Re(visions), which is about to hit bookstores. Published by Viena five years after Tot m'admira (2021), it revisits the author's family members, friends, and loves, including her last dog, Queta, who died in an accident just over a year ago.

"I am no longer in love with you": with these words the narrator's partner ends the eleven-year relationship in Islandia (Destino, 2026), the latest novel by Manuel Vilas. Once again, after the great impact of Ordesa (Alfaguara, 2018) and being a finalist for the Planeta award with Alegría (2019), the writer born in Barbastro in 1962 draws on his own life experience to tell a story of rupture that leaves the protagonist devastated. Will he be able to pick himself up again? Will he be able to find love once more, having suffered two separations that have caused him so much pain? Although Vilas does not shy away from chapters motivated by rage and misunderstanding, Islandia is a book that tries to help the author relearn to look at the world with a spark of optimism.