Kings Day. Illusion, gifts, joy, roscón, auction and last protagonists of the Christmas holidays and hundreds of books. Today I highlight here these 8 from authors as classic as black, epic or fantastic as Sophocles, Don Winslow, Ana María Matute or William Shakespeare.
Forgotten King Gudú - Ana Maria Matute
Posted in 1996, this novel has already become a classic since it was put on the shelves. The mastery of Ana María Matute composed perhaps her most recognized work and one of the great novels of contemporary literature. I am not a fantasy genre but this portrait of a Mythical Middle Ages and full of fables I love it. The same author considered it in her day her favorite book of all hers.
It is an account of fantastic tales that narrates the birth and expansion of the Kingdom of Olar with a plot full of characters and adventures. Set in the symbolic landscapes of the mysterious north and the inhospitable steppe of the East and South, which limit the expansion of the Kingdom of Olar, in whose destiny they will be fundamental the cunning of a girl, the magic of a sorcerer and the rules of the game of a creature that lives underground.
Chronicle of the stunned king - Gonzalo Torrente Ballester
Su Film adaptation It is still one of my (very few) Spanish films that I can watch tirelessly every time it is shown on television. Torrente Ballester published it in 1989. and it's a very fun recreation of life in the king's court Philip IV, especially when you decide what you want see the queen naked. This fact causes a commotion among his advisers and confessors who join the king's love affairs with a courtesan and the palace intrigues that follow. Everything is resolved with great irony and a lot of humor.
King Oedipus - Sophocles
A classic of classics with no known creation date. It is considered the Sophocles masterpiece. Oedipus is king of Thebes and husband of Jocasta and is in the most splendorous moment of his reign. When investigating the death of the previous king Laius, he discovers that this was his father. And his wife Jocasta is at the same time his mother. She commits suicide and Oedipus, after blinding himself, asks his brother-in-law Creon to let him go into exile.
The Lear King - William Shakespeare
Another classic tragedy with another mythical king as the Lear of the most famous English writer of all time. It was written between 1605 and 1606 and performed in 1606, and consists of five acts in verse and prose. It was published in 1608 and draws from sources such as Regum Brittaniae history written in 1135 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, although Shakespeare only used the figure of the king, since the argument is his original.
En The Lear King there are two parallel plots: that of the king and his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, and that of the Earl of Gloucester and his two sons. In both cases there is a traitorous son and great suffering on the part of the parents. The family only represents the worst nightmares and mistrust and madness will lead to a tragedy from which almost no one is saved. However, in the end, the already mad King Lear and Gloucester also have children who truly love them, little consolation just before they die.
The kings of cool - Don Winslow
In this prequel to Wild, Winslow recovers the characters from that novel to reconstruct their past, and transports us to a California almost mythical in its origins of drug trafficking and his connections to the Mexican drug cartels. It takes place in 2005 and Ben, Chon and O they live without restraint in Laguna Beach and have nothing clear what to do with their lives. So Chon comes back from Afghanistan on leave with a White Widow seed, a cannabis strain, and it's only a matter of time before they get into the business of growing and selling marijuana. But the problems also begin.
King of spades - Joyce Carol Oates
Essential reading for writers and how the process of creating a novel or that same novel can divide you in two. A new vision of the figure of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde applied to a writer with a brilliant career and a perfect family who writes successful detective novels by day and becomes the King of Spades, pseudonym which he uses to write other types of novels that are much more violent and creepy. The trigger for this transformation will be the summons he receives one day with a accusation of plagiarism by a neighbor of her locality.
The last argument of the kings - Joe Abercrombie
This British writer is a more than recognized name in the fantasy genre and this title closes his trilogy of The first law. The tonic of the author continues, an expert in introducing ourselves to some fairly recognizable and archetypal characters (the wise wizard, the young hero, the cruel cripple…). But then he teaches us that nobody is what he appeared to be.
In this ending the king of the Northmen remains on his throne and there is only one warrior who can stop him: the Bloodthirsty. On the other hand the King of the Union has died, the peasants rebel and the nobles fight for their crown. Only the first of the Magi has a plan to save the world, but this time there are risks. And the worst risk is breaking the First Law.
The last king - Michael Curtis Ford
A historical one to finish. The american Curtis Ford is a Latin teacher, translator, and writer. His works deal mainly with ancient Greece and Rome. In this he tells us the story of Mitríades, a precocious child in demonstrating his military skills and who wanted to unify the ancient Greek Empire. Became Mithriades VI, king of Pontus, and for forty years he fought many battles but was also a victim of his omnipotence. Your desire to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great they led him to a dramatic ending.