A few days after the news of the sale of El Anticuario in The Netherlands (to publishing house Q), we are happy to inform about a new sale of this fine crafted novel by Julián Sánchez: It will be published in Germany by Limes Verlag, an imprint of Random House.
El anticuario is a novel about a secret, a murder, a search, a love and an adventure all over the streets of a mysterious Barcelona. A story of intrigue, suspense and search of the truth.
When the antique dealer and ancient books seller Artur Aiguader is found dead in his shop in Barcelona, his step-son and writer Enrique Alonso flies to the city to take charge of Artur’s things.
Only a few days before the crime, as if it were an omen, Artur wrote a letter to Enrique telling that if something happened to him, Enrique should look for a manuscript hidden among the volumes in his library, a text from the 15th C. written in Latin and yet to be translated. The manuscript seems to have been written by Casadevall, one of the architects of the Cathedral of Barcelona.
Now, Artur has been killed and Enrique, conscious that the police should be allowed to do its job, is the only one who knows about the connexion between this death and the old manuscript. He can’t help trying to find his father’s killer on his own, while at the same time uncover the secrets that the Casadevall manuscript seems to hide.
The investigation reveals that Artur wasn’t only a good, educated and caring father, but also someone who acted as an intermediary between rich collectors of antique art and art traffickers. Besides, the translation of the manuscript offers him a journey to a past time in which Christians, Jews and scholars of the Kabbalah were trying to find ‘The Stone of God’: a big emerald on which the true name of God would be engraved…
Magic? Superstition? Much more than that, it is all about a fight that is lasting more than 2.500 years: the quest for earthly and spiritual power. As the manuscript is being translated, everybody who has access to it feels taken by the evil of ambition: the ambition to discover, to possess. Is it possible that this stone is nowadays hidden somewhere in Barcelona? Enrique and the mysterious killer think so… who will be the first one to find out?
Playing with past an present, Julian Sánchez has written a fascinating novel of mystery and adventures in which the reader is literally swept away by the plot. The building of the Cathedral of Barcelona, a cold and ambitous killer, the kabbalistic tradition and the many secrets hidden in 15th C. Barcelona’s Jewish quarter will take the reader’s breath away to the very last page.
Translation rights have already been sold to: The Netherlands (Q), Germany (Limes Verlag).
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