The drawback of literary classics that have become universal cultural icons is that we already know them by heart. The virtue of literary classics that have become universal cultural icons is that they are so significant and fascinating that you never tire of them and can return to them again and again, which transforms the inconvenience of knowing them by heart into a blessing, an incentive, and an advantage.

Great figures make history, but history also makes great figures. Josep Maria Llompart de la Peña (Palma, 1925-1993), descended on his father's side from a Mallorcan family that had adopted Castilian customs, and on his mother's side from a family of Castilian and Andalusian ancestry, with a military tradition, was raised and educated to be a man of order, a supporter of Franco, and a Castilian nationalist. In the end, through a mixture of personal rebellion, timely knowledge, and extreme historical circumstances, he became one of the most important writers in Catalan literature in Mallorca and the main civic-political icon of left-wing Mallorcan nationalism in the second half of the 20th century.

If we asked ChatGPT, with the vast amount of information it has about the writer Jordi Lara (Vic, 1968), to write us a story imitating his style, his imaginative soul, I highly doubt that it would give us a product as unique, and at the same time as complete, as this one. The Cat and the Stars It seems to mark a new turning point in the career of the author ofA machine for waking up birds at night (2008) and Mystic rabbit (2016). There is no celebration of memory like the one we found in the books cited, for example. Nor is there a reconstruction of a real person through their last days of life, as occurred in Six nights in August (2019) with Lluís Maria Xirinacs. Here it seems rather that the author wanted to make a vehement defense of fiction per seThe beginning might remind us of those desert-like, civilization-overwhelming settings found in some American authors like Cormac McCarthy. A tradition that also goes back to Faulkner.

We can never thank Antònia Carré-Pons, professor of medieval literature at the Autonomous University, enough for deciding to turn the family butcher shop, Cal Carré, into a small publishing house, because giving up cured meats is not only good for cholesterol but also opens the door to food for the soul and allows us to read gems like this one. History of Paris and Viana (Written around the 14th-15th centuries): a pure chivalric adventure set in the time of Charlemagne, possessing the temperament, rhythm, and wit that every good story should have. Thanks to her detective work among medieval manuscripts from different periods and languages, Gemma Pellissa Prades presents us with the amorous misadventures of two characters, Paris and Viana, the daughter of the Dauphin of France and a very young, courteous knight, in a Catalan that flows beautifully. They strive for love and overcome all kinds of obstacles.