Bruno Blog

I’m not an adventurer. I would like to be one, not have so many fears or prejudices. To have less quirks and get out of my comfort zone more often. But the truth is that adventure is not for me, and I’d rather to have everything under control. Perhaps I should try to go with the flow but for now, I take refuge in the reading.

One of the great adventurers of all time is Marco Polo, about whom many books have been written, but with this novel by Víctor Jurado named LA VERITABLE HISTÒRIA DE MARCO POLO (the truth about Marco Polo) we discover a new side of this character. For the lovers of the historical fiction novels and for those who adventure is part of their life, they will find an entertaining book and the true history about the most famous traveler of the silk route, who started his trip next to his father and uncle when he was only a child, a trip to Asia through deserts, seas and mountains. Marco Polo, in prison, remembers all these journeys, living in vans of traders and vicious warriors. A book that will take the readers to a fascinating, exotic and wild world.

Today I woke up in autumn weather. Grey sky, rains and my mind is already in the Frankfurt Book Fair, as every October. With the Book Fair, I change my wardrobe: I store the summer clothes and take the winter dresses out. The month of September flies by, and October and November are also vanishing faster and faster, so it’s almost Christmas without noticing.

Books are the center of my life: new stories, new authors, stories that work, best-sellers, and those books that are hard to place but you want to keep fighting for them. It’s a whole new world: changing, difficult but also magic. I feel lucky to enjoy my job after all these years, because being inside this big wheel, it’s unbearable if you are not happy doing your work. So here we are, facing our Frankfurt number 18 as Sandra Bruna Literary Agency, and we feel like sharing awesome stories with publishers from all over the world.

Today I cannot recommend only one title, but out catalogue for the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 where we put a lot of work, effort, attitude and hope. As I always said: there is a publisher for every book and a book for every publisher, so our job is to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Do you want to join us?

Japan is trending. Who visits the country of the rising Sun wants to go back. The Japanese culture is more and more established among us, from the restaurants and the food, to the Zen philosophy, which we can read in the Francesc Miralles’ latest books such as ICHIGO ICHIE, a phrase that heads the traditional Japanese tea shops and which means “live each instant as if it were unique”. Or the international bestseller IKIGAI, written also with Héctor Garcia, and already translated into 55 languages and it won’t stop.

Francesc surprises us, again, with the first young adult novel settled in Japan: SAKURA LOVE. An amazing, intimate and beautiful story that you will read in one seat, and that will leave you with a good taste in your mouth. You will fall in love with this reading, wishing it never ends because it evokes friendship and the power of love while you discover the most emblematic places of Japan, but also the secret ones.

I think this novel is Francesc in its purest form, a young adult book written from the heart and told from the soul. An inspiring story of love and self-awareness exploring one of the most exotic and trendy places. A novel addressed to the young ones but that will also seduce the adults.

Summer is over and most people want to start a diet, because the excesses of the month of August are noticeable: those jeans from the last fall don’t fit me anymore, my shirt is tight and you don’t look good yourself. The struggle of the kilos is for many a battle. I know it from experience. It is true that when you have gained certain kilos you feel that you have to start a diet to lose them.

However, Magda Carlas has always been a doctor and dietician who has given us tips to lose weight without being dramatic. And what’s better: when you go too far, you will know how to prevent yourself from gaining too many kilos, which then are difficult to lose again, even more when you’re old enough. This new manual, THE DIET CAN WAIT, helps us with easy tricks on how we should eat so that those excesses we all have in routine life do not make us gain a lot of weight.

Eating well and healthy, even if there are days that we overeat, we can maintain the weight in which we feel comfortable, the weight that is healthy for everyone. There is no ideal weight but a healthy weight, and with little tricks we can maintain it without having to do some barbarities that we read in magazines or social media.

Therefore, it is no longer about going on a diet but to eat in an intelligent and healthy way, and without spending months without being able to enjoy a good dinner with friends or a special weekend where the food is the center of attention.

Magda does not publish another book about diets but the opposite: she publishes very useful books to learn how to eat well and not have to live on a diet constantly.

The publishing world is attractive. People who don’t work there often ask you questions about the authors and the processes. Eyes from outside are always curious, and they believe that the world of literature is glamorous. I am not saying is not that way but only at very specific moments, because the reality, the day-to-day, are made of another kind of moments. 

Every day, it is increasingly difficult to find an editor who does not have to work as a manager and a thousand other things that would not be typical of his job. Therefore, the figure of the classic editor has disappeared. Consequently, we have also lost the love for a story, for a character.

Obviously, this is still a business, but it must also be a passion: it has to lead us to want to find those books that will steal the hearts of our readers. Many times I think that it is more and more complicated to do this, but it is the most beautiful thing about this job. Without leaving mathematics aside, because we cannot be naive or reckless, we should be able to equilibrate the balance so that letters are more important than numbers.

The novel EL ABISMO (the abysm) by Carla Gràcia is about the crisis of a writer who, after a huge success, has no more ideas, which can happen because the level of demand is always higher on the part of the publisher and the public, and many writers feel vertigo. In addition, the main character come from nowhere, from a complicated childhood, a mother who abandons him when he’s a young boy. After his literary success, Octavi getmanages to live well in a flat in Barcelona but he is unhappy, as his marriage and family collapse.

Octavi Fonseca has run out of ideas and his editor suggests him to take the idea of an unknown author. At this very moment that this dilemma makes him live badly, two policemen show up in his house to announce that his mother, with whom he had no relationship, has appeared dead and with a message for him.

A novel with a noir plot that raises the case of plagiarism as a tool to talk about how we are influenced by where we come from. About the literary creation and its complicated web, and how the strongest people always try to take advantage of the weakest. An impeccable narration that consolidates an author with a bright future. Without any doubt, one of the agency’s bets for this autumn, which is full of interesting voices, fresh and different.