A city is a living organism, unstable, which changes as the years go by, modified through contact with the observer. And the Barcelona of Xava, Colometa, Java, Sigismond, Carvalho, Natàlia, Watusi, Amargós and Clara is a city which bears the same name, but which is different every time.

(from the foreword by Andreu Gomila)

The book Barcelona: títol provisional: Un viatge literari per la ciutat offers a chance to rediscover Barcelona’s most literary side through the writers who have made the city the main character in their work.

The volume represents a journey around the contemporary city based on transcendental moments which have put Barcelona on the modern literature map: the Barcelona of vice, when writers from home and abroad use the darkest side of the city as a scene of inspiration; the Latin American boom, when the city took in important writers such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa; noir Barcelona, as the first city in the country to develop the noir and criminal literary genre, as one of the most important cities in the genre and as home to one of the genre’s biggest festivals; the Barcelona of a new generation of writers, the writers of the 21^st century, and eight chapters devoted to the main figures in Catalan literature from the 20th century.

The book also traces the mark left by eight of the most important authors of the 20^th century with links to the Catalan capital: Mercè Rodoreda, Jaume Cabré, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Roberto Bolaño, Juan Marsé, Quim Monzó, Montserrat Roig and Maria Mercè Marçal.

Both the themed and the biographical chapters were written by specialist writers and journalists: David Castillo, Ignacio Echevarría, Xavi Ayén, Teresa Solana, Marta Pessarrodona, Simona Škrabec, Carlos Zanón, Julià Guillamon, Irene Solà, Blanca Llum Vidal and the same Andreu Gomila.

The book proposes a route around the city which links urban space with locations featured in novels, taking in the most iconic neighbourhood and places from Barcelona as a literary city.