Florencia Bonelli, Claudia Piñeiro, Caparrós and Rep, among the 20 new May books at the Fair

May's new releases have an exceptional showcase at the 49th Buenos Aires International Book Fair, where more than a million people pass through each year to discover them in a celebration of reading. While bookstores make space for them on their shelves, their authors talk about them in the Fair's meeting area. A Clarín proposal to make sure you don't miss a thing.

San Francisco, 1866: an Irish nun, pregnant and abandoned by a Chilean aristocrat after a passionate affair, gives birth to a girl she names Emilia del Valle . Raised by her loving stepfather, Emilia grows into a brilliant young woman with a strong personality, independent and self-sufficient, who defies the social norms of her time to pursue her true passion and vocation: writing. At just seventeen, she publishes adventure novels under a male pseudonym. But soon, her fictional world becomes too small for her, and she decides to apply for the journalist position offered to her by the local newspaper to experience reality firsthand.

Some time later, she will be presented with the opportunity to travel as a correspondent to the raging civil war in Chile, and she will jump at the chance. Emilia will find herself in a bankrupt nation, on the brink of collapse. While covering the war between President Balmaceda and the rebel congress, she will take advantage of her stay in the country to explore her ties with the Del Valle family and finally meet her father.

Emilia del Valle is already an unforgettable character in Isabel Allende 's most fertile universe, the Del Valle saga, which began with her masterpiece The House of the Spirits and continued with Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia.

Diana, an extraordinary woman fighting for redemption. Mariyana Huseinovic is an elite soldier better known by her nom de guerre: Diana. An expert in the use of various types of weapons and martial arts, she defines herself as a killing machine. However, she hides a secret that makes her weak and vulnerable. When she was twenty, when war broke out in Bosnia, her homeland, Diana fell victim to the Serb nationalists, who imprisoned her as a slave in a concentration camp. Now she has decided to take revenge and destroy the dragons that turned her into a cold woman, full of hate and pain. But fate has a surprise in store for her, and her plans will take an unexpected path. Perhaps that of redemption?

Compelling, ambitious, and well-researched, Here Be Dragons is a novel full of action and adventure that reserves a special place for love. The undisputed number one in fiction in Argentina, Florencia Bonelli knows how to create unforgettable plots and characters for her thousands of readers, who celebrate each of her books with renewed happiness.

Juliana falls into the void, wearing a flowing white dress that flutters in the air, but instead of crashing to the ground, just before landing, she waves her arms and flies like a butterfly. Verónica Balda is a journalist and hosts one of the most listened-to morning radio programs. One day, she receives news that will completely change the course of her life: a young woman fell from a fifth-floor apartment in the Recoleta neighborhood. The apartment belongs to a well-known agricultural entrepreneur, and the woman's death is much more than alarming news. Verónica knows who she is; a dense and secret history connects them.

As the novel unfolds, the reader will learn different versions of the events, revealing how a narrative can be multifaceted and subjective, replete with artifice and assumptions. A master at constructing unsettling atmospheres and managing narrative tension, Claudia Piñeiro boldly addresses a chillingly topical issue and, through the always fascinating possibilities of fiction, lays bare one of the darkest, most intimate, and oldest ties: that of VIP prostitution with the powers that be.

Parade , the new and eagerly awaited novel by Rachel Cusk (Canada, 1967), with which she once again surprises her readers and expands the boundaries of what fiction is capable of, as she had already done in her prestigious trilogy Backlight. Parade is a novel that challenges the conventions of narrative, a book that emerges beyond the limits of identity, characters and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives.

“They asked her to write a biography of Eva Perón. She said no. They asked her again, and she refused again. In 2011, when her work was finally circulating in bookstores, Aurora Venturini also presented herself as one of the few people alive and with memory capable of telling us something new about Eva. From the day she received her award for Las primas in December 2007, until her death in 2015, she had made a point of maintaining a very close relationship with the woman who had been her boss, not just a spiritual one,” writes Liliana Viola in the prologue to Las Marías de Los Toldos.

“While it's impossible to place Las Marías de Los Toldos, as she insisted to her editors, within the realm of biography, it clearly proposes a phantasmatic genealogy and a hallucinated answer to the main questions that Eva Perón's figure provokes among both fans and detractors. What was this woman made of? What material led her to become what she became? What force drove her to be all she was? Why was her corpse so frightening? Will she return?” she adds.

This is an anthology of detective stories in which justice and revenge are two sides of the same coin. Here, killing, stealing, and fleeing unfold in a choral symphony that reveals that sometimes the only way forward is to challenge the oppressive system that guarantees us nothing but subjugation and immobility. With experimental lyricism and a keen ear for popular sayings, Gorodischer takes on heroines and heroes from the underworld and narrates their exploits, small and great, with a sense of understanding and relatability. Prolific and restless, Angélica Gorodischer is one of the great Argentine authors of the 20th century. Known above all for her science fiction books—her "Imperial Kalpa" was translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin—she excelled in all genres of creation, and beyond, leaving us with a vast and unparalleled body of work, which we are only now beginning to measure.

A fundamental reissue for the history of Argentine literature: Osvaldo Lamborghini, a biography , by Ricardo Strafacce , a monumental book originally published by Mansalva in 2008 and which remained almost unfindable, out of print for years.

This is a volume of nearly 900 pages that covers in minute detail the life, work, and practice (political, psychoanalytic, literary) of one of the most important authors of 20th-century Argentine literature. A permanent reference for anyone interested in studying the subject, the book became a cult text and is now available in bookstores across the country.

This work is a luminous and passionate portrait of a long series of essential authors of Latin American fiction of recent decades. Its pages feature anecdotes, stories, statements, in-depth interviews, and portraits of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Almudena Grandes, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Fernando Aramburu, Antonio Orejudo, Rafael Reig, Juan Carlos Onetti, Leonardo Padura, Jorge Semprún, and Cristina Fernández Cubas, as well as invaluable profiles of writers such as Susan Sontag and Günter Grass.

For more than a decade, two Russian spies lived in Buenos Aires under the false identities of Ludwig Gisch and María Rosa Mayer Muños. Married, with children born in Argentina, they pretended to be a middle-class family while carrying out a secret mission for Russia. Every detail of their lives was a facade for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). He claimed to be a computer scientist; she was taking her first steps as an art gallery owner. They assumed identities, traveled throughout South America and Europe, easily bypassing immigration controls, forged friendships that could be of interest to Moscow, transmitted encrypted messages from a rooftop in Barrancas de Belgrano... A double life that imploded in December 2022, when special troops arrested them in Slovenia.

That wasn't the end, however, for the two spies. After a year and a half of negotiations led by presidents and intelligence chiefs, they were involved in the largest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War. Hugo Alconada Mon unravels the plot of these "sleepers," from their meticulous preparations to their dramatic return to Moscow. How did they hide their true identity from their own children? What was their mission in our country? Why did no one detect them in the Río de la Plata? What led them to relocate to Europe? Why did they fall?

Topos is a true story told with the pace of a thriller, surpassing the award-winning series The Americans ; it also reveals the alarming fragility of preventive security and intelligence systems in the face of the possibility of infiltration that could pose a serious threat to Argentina's interests.

Juan Luis González explained who Milei is in El Loco , the first biography of the libertarian. The Forces of Heaven completes that work. It includes interviews with Milei's "sorcerer" and those most familiar with his supernatural side, the mystical background of his sister Karina, and the surprising consequences of esoteric practices in the government that influence daily decision-making and the choice of partners for the head of state.

In The Forces of Heaven , documents are revealed for the first time that prove Milei's role as political, economic, and philosophical advisors; and the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of the death of the fifth Conan clone in 2020, with whom he claims to play every morning in Olivos. Argentina is not only facing the first anarcho-capitalist experiment on the planet, but also a messianic project of power embodied in a leader who believes himself predestined to eradicate the "Evil One" from the Earth.

The Inventor , by Miguel Bonnefoy (Libros del Asteroide)

A very short and captivating novel that blends science and literature through the portrait of a forgotten genius, Augustin Mouchot, and his passion: solar energy. With admirable narrative flair, Miguel Bonnefoy tells a moving true story with legendary overtones of scientific tenacity and passion, confirming its author as one of the most distinguished talents in contemporary French literature.

The Day of My Death , Federico Axat (Planeta)

After murdering her boyfriend during what was supposed to be a romantic evening, Anna mysteriously disappears, leaving behind a host of questions and a single clue: a notebook with a date and a drawing of a kangaroo. Almost two years later, on the exact date she wrote in the notebook, Anna is discovered unconscious on the shore of a lake, with no memory of what she did or where she's been all this time. While being treated in the hospital, she finds an unexpected ally in Julia, a prominent psychiatrist with closely guarded secrets of her own. In a suspiciously selfless act, Julia helps her escape and hide in a cabin, where together they will try to find the answers Anna so desperately needs. But the intrigue behind this story goes far beyond the reasons why Anna killed her boyfriend or why she can't remember anything.

Disturbing and suspenseful, The Day I Die is a mind-twisting, speculative thriller with supernatural undertones that poses a literary challenge that will impress even genre lovers who think they've read everything. "Once again, Federico Axat is the kind of hypnotic writer you love to read, but can never completely trust," The New York Times.

White , by Han Kang (Random House)

White is unclassifiable, perhaps the most unusual contribution of the South Korean Nobel Prize winner, Han Kang duels with the invisible, the hypothetical, the pure, the imagined, the elusive, the vanished, the clean, the flat, the icy, the hollow, the silent; white, in short, as a synonym for loss or irreplaceable emptiness

During her stay in an unfamiliar country, Han Kang is overcome by a pressing need to write about the color white. It is her way of making sense of a tragedy that has always tormented her: the premature death of her sister, just hours after birth; someone she never knew and whom she seems to have replaced. Invoking the memories that link her to white will be her way of conversing with her, evoking her face, and burying her intimately in writing.

After the extraordinary reception of his novel "Salo Solo: El Patrullero del Amor ," Mauricio Kartun returns with fifteen unforgettable stories that, through his delicate and expert ear, move, entertain, and make us celebrate that literature that always finds its readers.

"Even for this, you're second-best, Nelson. Even for summer vacations, you were born a leftover and a scrap, Nelson. No. This is over. This is over with you today. That's it. I'm returning to the capital with the baby." A husband-passenger. A discouraged party host. A pop Orpheus. A real-life screenwriter. A window-shop Adonis. A blind former athlete who sells lollipops outside a school. As in his plays, Mauricio Kartun 's characters coexist among curious and eccentric creatures. Filled with the humor that is the hallmark of his style, each of these stories also constitutes an animated tableau, like oral pieces that can be seen, like finished visual scenes.

If there's one man all Argentinians know, it's the gaucho Martín Fierro. Many fewer know his author, Mr. José Hernández, and often what they know about him is far from the truth. In these pages, his character, Martín Fierro, furious and grateful, resentful and affectionate, tells us about his creator's life in the same gaucho verses that made him famous.

But this time Fierro doesn't sing, he tells: Here I begin to tell the story I wouldn't have liked: the story of that cunning snake who, in order to tell a story, stole my memory, changed it entirely. His name was José Hernández, although he was also called Pueyrredón, because he boasted of being a man from the bottom of the earth and was rich as hell, richer than the Queen of Sheba. His family was one of those who raided our lands: pampas, rivers, forests, mountains; they kept everything and just like that, they fenced it in to leave us out.

Mizumura is one of Japan's most important contemporary writers. For her first novel, Mizumura set herself an enormous challenge: to imagine a possible ending to Light and Darkness , which Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), considered the most important novelist of modern Japan, left unfinished upon his death. For years, there was speculation in Japan about a possible ending to the story of the gradual destruction of a young marriage - Tsuda and his wife O-Nobu - due to the malicious intervention of various characters: the resentful Kobayashi, a friend from Tsuda's student days; Tsuda's sister Hideko, jealous of her sister-in-law; and the fearsome Mrs. Yoshikawa, wife of Tsuda's boss.

All of these characters reappear in Light and Darkness , a sequel, as does Kikoyo, the woman Tsuda loved before marrying O-Nobu, who left him with an open wound that threatens the survival of his new marriage. Set in a remote mountain village in 1920s Japan, where Tsuda has retreated to recover from an operation and where he encounters his first love, Mizumura's novel can be read completely independently, without needing to know Soseki's unfinished story.

The publication of Light and Darkness , a sequel in Japan in 1990, was not without some controversy, but it was also a success. Some criticized Mizumura's boldness, while others praised his bravery and his ability to recreate Soseki's writing, establishing, without a doubt, a distinct voice that earned him a prominent place in Japanese literature. Its first edition in Spanish is undoubtedly a major event for fans of Sōseki, Mizumura, and Japanese literature in general.

An essay that explores the hidden processes that govern our thinking. Confirmation bias, the fallacy of composition, the paradox of choice, and the clustering illusion are just some of the cognitive mechanisms that act as lenses through which we view the surrounding reality.

The pages of this book contain an invitation to consider how we think, to try to recognize, using concepts that emerged in social psychology during the second half of the 20th century, some of the mental configurations that condition us.

Haruki Murakami ran a jazz club called Peter Cat for years before dedicating himself full-time to writing. Upon opening this volume, the reader will undoubtedly feel as if they have sat at one of the venue's tables while Murakami himself tells them anecdotes and details about the songs playing, in a confidential, warm, and enthusiastic tone. The Japanese writer's passion for jazz undoubtedly led him to write this book, composed of fifty-five portraits of jazz musicians, accompanied by an illustration by the Japanese artist Wada Makoto and a commentary on one of each musician's albums.

Thanks to Murakami, each entry becomes a delightful little story, a fragment of autobiographical memory, advice on listening to a performer, or fresh insights into an artist or an era. From the legendary Chet Baker to Ella Fitzgerald, the book features great figures such as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and Art Pepper. Everything you've always wanted to know about Murakami and jazz, told by the author himself.

He had just been defeated. Manuel Belgrano, the general who had earned everyone's admiration, was going through one of his worst moments. The resounding defeats in the battles of Vilcapugio and Ayohuma had left him in a bad position, not just politically. Abandoned to his fate and far from glory, he was at the mercy of whatever the usual powerful decided about him, those who knew little or nothing about the tragedies of the battlefield. He had no choice: prison and scorn awaited him, or he could blindly accept the mission entrusted to him by the Buenos Aires government in the Old Continent. He said yes. But he never imagined that what lay ahead was one of the most crazy missions in the history of the Río de la Plata and that his traveling companion would be the ever-ambiguous Bernardino Rivadavia. In this hallucinatory drift, which would begin in an imperial Rio de Janeiro and continue in Regency London, he would have to deal in all directions with Lord Strangford, Manuel de Sarratea, the buffoonish Count Domingo Cabarrús and a whole series of nebulous characters, architects of the darkest intrigues.

Travels, plots, betrayals, fleeting loves, loyalties that last only a breath, and others that are sealed in blood. With one foot in a real event—the affair known as "The Italian Affair"—and the other in the speculations of what might have been, Felipe Pigna 's first fiction story reads with the pulse of a spy thriller and the attention that great historical figures always command. That's why Conspiracy in London is a unique novel, a book that only one of Argentina's most renowned historians could have written.

She is a young Romani woman fleeing an arranged marriage; he is a watchmaker camping on the border between Italy and Slovenia who welcomes her into his shop. This encounter inaugurates an exchange of knowledge and visions: she believes in destiny, in signs; he interprets the world according to the Mikado's rules, as if playing were a way of bringing order to chaos. An understanding that will last a lifetime and will confront both of them with inevitable decisions whose consequences will reverberate throughout time. A surprising and moving novel, The Mikado's Rules intertwines the stories of two unforgettable characters. As in games of chance, life hides mysteries and unexpected situations that escape our understanding but that irrevocably shape our lives.