Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (born  July 27, 1939 in Barcelona , †  October 18, 2003 at Bangkok Airport ) was a Spanish writer and journalist . He wrote a number of detective novels about the private detective Pepe Carvalho .

Life

Vázquez Montalbán grew up in a simple family in Barcelona. His father was imprisoned as a republican in Franco-Spain after the war, which was just as formative for Montalbán as the hunger and deprivation of the common people in the "famine years" after the Spanish civil war . After studying journalism, he wrote for numerous left-wing opposition magazines and made a name for himself as a funny and harsh critic of the regime. After Franco's death, he also published in major daily newspapers and became one of the most famous newspaper journalists in the country. In parallel to his journalistic career, he initially published mainly poetry and short stories, and from the 1970s onwards increasingly novels, non-fiction books and essays.

As a lyricist, he belonged to the group of so-called novísimos in the sixties, who rejected any compulsion to a logically coherent discourse in their poetry and combined old and new forms of poetry . Topics and myths, preferably from cinema, hits, television and trivial literature flowed into this literature and were used like collages . Vázquez Montalbán contradicted the accusation that the novísimos fade out the extra-literary reality and have no political consciousness: precisely the refusal to follow the Francoist literary models and instead to assemble them into new contexts is political poetry. These new techniques are e.g. This can be seen, for example, in his 1970 novel Manifiesto subnormal , a collage of dialogues, reports, poems, quotes and explanations by the author, a mixture of manifesto and fiction. Montalbán called this practice "escritura subnormal". During this phase he tried to establish a literary countercurrent to Franquism with alienation techniques, by assembling different popular genres and characters and a mixture of popular myths.

Vázquez Montalban became internationally known through the crime novels about the private detective Pepe Carvalho, who he invented . He deliberately planned the Carvalho series as the “Chronicle of the transición ”, Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy. But not only in his detective novels, but also in his numerous non-fiction books, essays and contemporary historical novels, he dealt critically with Spanish society after the Franco dictatorship . With the series, the author reacted to the changed literary landscape after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 and the abolition of censorship in 1978. The population's need for information could again be satisfied by the media such as radio and newspapers, criticism could be expressed publicly, so that the narrative literature was relieved of this function. Vázquez Montalbán wrote his first detective novel Tatuaje (1974); Based on this, he began his crime series about Pepe Carvalho with La soledad del manager in 1977 . He has also published short stories and novels such as El pianista (1985), Los alegres muchachos de Atzavara (1987) and the multiple award-winning Galíndez . In Germany, Vázquez Montalbán was primarily perceived as the creator of Pepe Carvalho, i.e. more as a crime writer and less as a political chronicler. In the first Carvalho translations, the sometimes extensive political discussions of the characters were deleted; only when the translations were revised in the 1990s, when the author was internationally known, were the books fully transferred. In 1981 he received the prestigious Grand prix de littérature policière for his novel Tahiti is near Barcelona . In 1992 Vázquez Montalbán was awarded the Swedish Crime Prize - International for The Seas of the South .

The extremely productive writer, who has published over 100 books, has written not only prose but also poetry , essays , plays, political and contemporary history books and cookbooks. He wrote for numerous magazines as well as a regular column and other articles for the most important Spanish daily newspaper El País . A total of over 8,000 articles were counted after his death, 2,124 of which have been in El País since 1980.

The Italian writer Andrea Camilleri , a great admirer of Vázquez Montalbán, named his own Sicilian main hero Commissario Salvo Montalbano after him.

Works

Novels

published in German:

• I killed Kennedy , ISBN 3-499-42893-8 , original title: Yo maté a Kennedy (published 1972)
• Carvalho and the tattooed corpse ; ISBN 3-499-42732-X / ISBN 978-3-8031-2694-8 , original title: Tatuaje (1974)
• Carvalho and the lonely manager (German first edition The loneliness of the manager ), ISBN 3-492-23148-9 / newly edited ISBN 978-3-8031-2701-3 , original title: La soledad del manager (1977)
• (Carvalho and) The Seas of the South , ISBN 3-492-23149-7 / revised ISBN 978-3-8031-2713-6 , original title: Los mares del sur (1979)
• Carvalho and the murder in the Central Committee , ISBN 3-499-43116-5 / revised ISBN 978-3-8031-2731-0 , original title: Asesinato en el Comité Central (1981)
• The birds of Bangkok , ISBN 3-492-23577-8 , original title: Los pájaros de Bangkok (1983)
• (Carvalho and) The Rose of Alexandria , ISBN 3-492-23622-7 / revised ISBN 978-3-8031-2762-4 , original title: La rosa de Alejandria (1984)
• Der Pianist , ISBN 3-499-12681-8 , original title: El Pianista (1985)
• When the dead bathe , ISBN 3-492-23146-2 , original title: El balneario (1986)
• The funny boys from Atzavara , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 3-8031-2356-9 , original title: Los alegres muchachos de Atzavara (1987)
• Duel , ISBN 3-499-42909-8 , original title Historias de padres e hijos (1987)
• Lauras Asche , ISBN 3-499-42882-2 , new edition Laura and Catalina , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 978-3-8031-1229-3 , original title: Tres historias de amor (1987)
• Das Quartett , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 3-8031-3134-0 / ISBN 978-3-8031-2686-3 , original title: Cuarteto (1988)
• Carvalho in the Greek Labyrinth (German first edition Verloren im Labyrinth ), Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 978-3-8031-2733-4 , original title: El laberinto griego (1991)
• Carvalho and the Olympic Sabotage (German first edition War for the Olympics ), Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 978-3-8031-2752-5 , original title: Sabotaje olímpico (1993)
• Robinson's considerations in view of a box of stockfish , ISBN 3-8031-1162-5 / ISBN 978-3-8031-2536-1 Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, original title: Reflexiones de Robinsón ante un bacalao (1995)
• Carvalho and the girl who should be Emmanuelle , ISBN 978-3-8031-2695-5 Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, original title: La muchacha que pudo ser Emmanuelle (1997)
• Quintet in Buenos Aires , ISBN 3-492-04204-X , original title: Quinteto de Buenos Aires (1997)
• The shot from ambush / Carvalho and the dead center forward , ISBN 3-499-42955-1 / ISBN 978-3-8031-2726-6 , original title: El delantero centro fue asesinado al atardecer (1988)
• The kitchen of venial sins. Cooking with Pepe Carvalho , ISBN 3-492-23147-0 , original title: Las recetas de Carvalho (1988)
• Lost in the labyrinth , ISBN 3-499-43055-X , original title: El laberinto griego (1988); Newly published in 2015 as Carvalho in the Greek Labyrinth , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 978-3-8031-2733-4
• The game of power , ISBN 3-499-13036-X , original title: Galíndez (1992)
• Undercover in Madrid , ISBN 3-492-23982-X , original title: El premio (1996)
• Kaiser or Nothing , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 3-8031-3145-6 , original title: O César o nada (1998)
• The last bolero , ISBN 3-492-04371-2 , original title: El hombre de mi vida (2001)
• Hof der Lust , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN ISBN 978-3-8031-2518-7 , original title: Erec y Enide (2002)
• Requiem for a connoisseur , ISBN 978-3-492-04696-1 , original title: Milenio Carvalho (2004, 2 volumes)

Non-fiction

• Informe sobre la información (~ report on the information system) "Bible" by journalists critical of the government, 1963
• Sentimental chronicle about Spain more than one reckoning with the Franco dictatorship, 1971
• Barcelona (~ Different sides of Barcelona) , 1992 (original in Spanish, 1987)
• La aznaridad. Por el imperio hacia Dios o por Dias hacia el imperio (~ The Aznar system) posthumously 2004
• Y Dios entró en La Habana , El País Aguilar Publishing House, 1998 (non-fiction book about Fidel Castro's Cuba, Spanish)
• Marcos. Herr der Spiegel , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, ISBN 3-8031-3606-7 , original title: Marcos: el señor de los espejos , 1999 (here the author describes the Mexican Zapatista movement and explores the question of the future of left-wing critical politics in the age of globalization)

literature

• Albrecht Buschmann: Power and its price. Detective narration with Leonardo Sciascia and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005.
• José Fernando Colmeiro: Crónica del desencanto. La narrativa de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. North South Center, Miami 1996.
• Eaude, Michael: Con el muerto a cuestas: Vázquez Montalbán y Barcelona . Alrevés, Barcelona 2011.
• Sandra J. Puvogel: The detective fiction of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Michigan State University Press, Ann Arbor 1988.
• Georges Tyras: Geometrías de la memoria. Conversaciones con Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Editorial Zoela, Granada 2003.

Web links

• Literature by and about Manuel Vázquez Montalbán in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin
• Literature by and about Manuel Vázquez Montalbán in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Manuel Vázquez Montalbán  in the German Digital Library
• Literature by and about Manuel Vázquez Montalbán in the catalog of the library of the Instituto Cervantes in Germany
• Manuel Vázquez Montalbán in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The Unofficial Web Page (multilingual)
• “Memory and Rain” , Friday No. 43 of October 27, 2006 (excellent portrait of the writer and intellectual Manuel Vázquez Montalbán)
• Try about the series. From the end of a crime epic - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's detective Pepe Carvalho resigns after more than thirty years. [1] , long article about the last volume of the Carvalho series, the development of their hero and their leitmotifs
• Page of the Spanish language Wikipedia with a more detailed list of literature