Novel
The City of Marvels
La ciudad de los prodigios
Eduardo Mendoza · 1986
Synopsis
Barcelona, 1888. Onofre Bouvila, who comes from a poor village in inland Catalonia, from which his father had left to seek his fortune in Cuba, lodges in a boarding house run by a man and his daughter, Delfina. His first job consists of handing out anarchist leaflets to the workers on the Universal Exhibition site; he then sells a hair-loss lotion, and then enters the service of a lawyer who leads one of the city's gangs. From the underworld to speculation on the land of the urban expansion, he rises as the city is transformed.
Context
The novel was published by Seix Barral in 1986. The author had begun it shortly after his first book, away from his city, had set it aside, then took it up again and rewrote it once he had settled back in Barcelona, in order to recover the image of a city from which he had been absent. It covers the years between the two world fairs of 1888 and 1929, and its prologue warns that it is not an ordinary historical novel. Critics see it as the high point of his work. Olivier Rolin translated it into French, Bernard Molloy into English.
Who it is for
A long novel of social ascent, laden with digressions on the city and its building works; it helps to love Barcelona or urban history.
Prizes and reception
The author's most acclaimed book; Mario Camus adapted it for the screen in 1999, with Olivier Martinez and Emma Suárez.