Los jugadores de Whist / The Whist Players

About Los jugadores de Whist / The Whist Players

LA NOVELA MÁS EMBLEMÁTICA DE VICENÇ PAGÈS JORDÀ: BIENVENIDOS A LA PARTIDA

«Los jugadores de whist es una novela diáfana, divertida y espumosa como un buen shandy. Una novela que no debería pasar desapercibida». -Màrius Serra

Jordi Recasens es un fotógrafo oriundo de Figueres en plena crisis de madurez. Su matrimonio está acabado, malvive en el garaje de su casa adosada y su esposa se comporta como una adolescente.

Cuando Marta, su hija de veinte años, se casa con Bad Boy, un pelao orgulloso de conducir una minirretroexcavadora, Jordi decide revisitar los últimos treinta años de su vida sin revanchismo ni nostalgia, movido únicamente por el afán de comprender. Resurge así un pasado que incluye un castillo, un juego, una muerte, un Ampurdán que no es de postal y la decepción de crecer y descubrir un abismo entre lo que uno quería ser y lo que ha acabado siendo.

Los jugadores de whist, la novela más emblemática de Vicenç Pagès Jordà –autor clave de la literatura catalana contemporánea– es una obra fragmentaria que empieza como Stand by me, prosigue como El padre de la novia y culmina en una mezcla de American Beauty y Mystic River. Bienvenidos a la partida

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

VICENÇ PAGÈS JORDÀ’S MOST ICONIC NOVEL. WELCOME TO THE GAME.

“The Whist Players is a diaphanous novel, as effervescent and fun as a good shandy. It’s a novel that shouldn’t go unnoticed.” -Màrius Serra

Jordi Recasens is a photographer from Figueres, in the Catalan region of Empordà. When we meet him, he is in the throes of a midlife crisis: his marriage is over, he is camping out in his garage, and his wife is acting like a teenager.

When Marta, his twenty-year-old daughter, marries Bad Boy, a lowlife who brags about his job driving a mini-backhoe, Jordi decides to reexamine the last thirty years of his life, driven less by regret or nostalgia than the need to understand how he got to this point. In the process, he reveals a past that features a castle, a game, a death, an Empordà very different from the one we see in postcards, and the disappointment of discovering the abyss that exists between what we imagined our lives would be and what they’ve become.

The Whist Players, the latest and most iconic novel by Vicenç Pagès Jordà –a leading figure in contemporary Catalan literature– is made up of vignettes, beginning in the spirit of Stand by Me, segueing into Father of the Bride and culminating in a mashup of American Beauty and Mystic River.

Welcome to the game.