Four reasons:

• It approaches the horror genre in a different way.
• The writing appeals to those who are different in an intelligent and original way.
• The sound element becomes a central feature of the plot.
• Its ability to create oppressive atmospheres using elements from the natural environment.

Two positive appraisals:

• Fòrvid offers a very Catalan contribution to the haunted-house literary tradition.
• Fòrvid represents a powerful debut and has considerable personality in Catalan fantasy.

Four reasons:

• It updates the pantheon of our generation’s horrors from a feminist perspective.
• It shows that the most indescribable horror is the one that lurks inside human beings.
• It proves that, among the cosmic and everyday horrors, the most terrible are the latter.
• The author has been showing, for some years now, his capacity to raise the literary quality bar with each of his works.

Two positive appraisals:

• Dientes rojos makes it clear that the real monsters... are ourselves!
• Dientes rojos is a book that makes us angry and makes us suffer.

Four reasons:

• The author's capacity to reinvent herself, with a novel completely different from her previous, highly acclaimed work.
• The evocative simplicity with which the book takes on the relationship of the individual with their environment and their capacity to interpret it.
• How the book relates to its readers through an innocent narrator and how it continually compels us to call it into question.
• Its ability to create a setting, The House, a small universe that ends up becoming the plot's key organic central character.

Two positive appraisals:

• Piranesi represents a fully acclaimed return of a top fantasy writer.
• Piranesi pays enormous homage to the imagination as a refuge from reality and a tool for survival.

Four reasons:

• It’s a delightful love story explained in epistolary form which defies time and space.
• The pages in this volume are made of pure speculative poetry.
• It somehow recreates the famous couple made up of Romeo and Juliet with two ingenuous loves who travel in time but never meet up.
• Here Sancho becomes Quijote in the form of a romantic story that unfolds during different time periods.

Two positive appraisals:

• Así se pierde la guerra del tiempo shows the way the two authors work to sound like a single voice to their readers.
• Así se pierde la guerra del tiempo shows us antagonistic characters who, even so, know each other better than they do their own family members.

Four reasons:

• The skill with which it depicts the anguish of a mother faced with an inexplicable and terrible situation affecting her daughter.
• The author’s capacity to create unease using horror mechanisms.
• The virtuosity with which it uses dialogue to give form to its characters, build atmospheres and move the story along.
• The care taken in designing this edition, taking advantage of the fiftieth anniversary of the work and making its virtues even more evident.

Two positive appraisals:

• The publication of L’exorcista represents a revival of an absolute classic in horror literature.
• L’exorcista remains as topical as ever as a novel exploring the meeting point between faith and reason.

Pol Guasch (Tarragona, 1997) is a graduate in Literary Studies (University of Barcelona), has a master’s degree in Construction and Representation of Cultural Identities (UB) and in Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory (King’s College, London) and attended the Independent Studies Programme at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. He is a member of the La Sullivan cultural production company. He has written several books of poetry, including Tanta gana (winner of the 2018 Francesc Garriga Prize) and La part del foc (winner of the 2020 López-Picó Prize), and recited his poems at national and international festivals. His first novel, Napalm en el corazón (winner of the 2021 Llibres Anagrama Prize), is to be published in several languages, including English and French.

Four reasons:

• Napalm al cor is a fresh and interesting literary offering which uses poetic language as a gateway to science fiction.
• The naturalness with which he tackles various complex issues, such as sexual identity and the need to question authority, courageously, both in form and content.
• The way in which Napalm al cor inserts itself, whether or not intentionally, into the Catalan literary tradition of dystopias, in a subversive and topical way.
• The author's ability to find a particular voice that speaks for many and having done so through a demanding use of the Catalan language throughout the work.

Two positive appraisals:

• Pol Guasch breaks with traditional binary approaches and achieves a self-assured approach that is full of nuances of sexuality between the two main characters.
• Napalm al cor offers a magnificent approach to reality through the symbolic value of non-mimetic literature, satisfying the premise that science fiction can be the most realistic of all genres.

Layla Martínez (Madrid, 1987) is a writer and editor for the indie publishing label Antipersona. Her latest essay, Utopía no es una isla, explores the idea of utopia over the past few centuries and the possibility of constructing a utopian horizon in the present. She has coordinated and given literature workshops, film cycles and talks on the history of women and social movements. She is a regular contributor to the newspaper El Salto.

Four reasons:

• Carcoma is an example of rural horror that takes as its setting a Spain where the generational and class traumas have not yet healed.
• Carcoma shows us the consequences of allowing hate to nest inside us.
• The way in which Carcoma talks to us about a generational wound that still bleeds, based on a supernatural story.
• Its ability to tell a passionate story which, at the same time, includes social criticism and reflects the generational and political wounds of a country.

Two positive appraisals:

• Carcoma uses punctuation to create sensations in its readers and shows the author's extensive mastery of language.
• Carcoma is a short text but has infinite readings.

Alejo Cuervo (Barcelona, 1959) is an editor who has brought us, initially from Martínez Roca and later from the Gigamesh label, some of the best genre stories of the last fifty years. And, along with those, he has brought us games, comics and a coveted merchandising that up until then, had been impossible to find in our country. However, we are mainly indebted to him for his having been the creator of the Gigamesh bookshop, which back in the 1990s became a beacon of light in the darkness and succeeded in bringing together a “geek triangle” of shops associated with the genre, to the delight of a whole generation of aficionados. Fandom wouldn’t be what it is today without Alejo Cuervo.

Pol Castellanos Mayós (Barcelona, 1991) is a graduate in Literary Studies from the University of Barcelona and has a master's degree in Literary Creation from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He currently combines reading with teaching. He made his literary debut in 2019 with L’impostor de Viena, which won the Alba Prize for best Catalan-language fantasy book for young people. His second novel, L’assassina de Venècia, won the Ramon Muntaner Prize for Youth Literature last year and presents a new story based on the characters in the first novel.

Four reasons:

• The author's skill in bringing together story, setting, adventure and characters, to build up a page-turning plot.
• The author's ability to provide a new approach to classic values of youth literature, such as friendship, generosity, sacrifice and collaboration, within the framework of a story of growth.
• The author's ability to provide a new approach to classic values of youth literature, such as friendship, generosity, sacrifice and collaboration, within the framework of a story of growth.
• How the book incorporates an aspect of social criticism, while staying true to the spirit of adventure, regarding the need for collaboration between social classes.

Two positive appraisals:

• L’assassina de Venècia brings to life a highly resourceful female protagonist which young readers can easily identify with.
• L’assassina de Venècia very imaginatively expands the world that the author began to sketch out with L’impostor de Viena.