Historias del Kronen
Kronen Stories It is the first novel of a tetralogy written by the Spanish author José Ángel Mañas. The work was published by Destino editorial in 1994, and managed to obtain a Nadal Award nomination in the same year. Mañas was only 23 years old when his book appeared on the shelves, and he has always assured that he finished writing it in just 15 days.
The following volumes that make up the tetralogy are: Mensaka, Striped City y Sonko95. Kronen Stories It was translated into several languages, including Dutch and German. Likewise, it was made into a film in 1995 by director Montxo Armendáriz. Today, the title is considered a cult bestseller, receiving mostly positive reviews.
Synopsis of Kronen Stories
Historical context of the work
Kronen Stories appears as a generational novel, which, with their anecdotes full of sex, drugs and rock and roll, comes to represent to the demographic cohort of the people who lived their youth early in the nineties —decade in which the plot is located. Boys between twenty and twenty-five years old are invaded by the changes that happened at that time in Spain, such as the Barcelona Olympics and La Expo.
A strong cultural change sweeps the country. That leaves people wanting to jump over the barriers of the classic and join in creating something new, as has happened in States like the USA.
Kronen Stories plays a fundamental role when it comes to portraying the youth of the early nineties, the way they thought and acted, and their need for expression through art. These characters are children of parents who lived closely the dictatorship.
About the plot
The year 1992 takes place in Madrid. Live there Carlos, a young man of twenty-one, a university student and the son of economically well-to-do parents. Actually, it seems that the life of this boy is reeling between his blurred moral concepts, his inability to lead his existence in any direction and his expensive outings with his group of friends, who are just as lazy and misfits as he is.
Carlos brings together two of the most despicable qualities in one person: he only loves himself and is unsympathetic. His days are filled with his frequent meetings with his friends at the Kronen, a fictitious bar located in the vicinity of Francisco Silvela street in Madrid. José Ángel Mañas describes his main character as a sociopath, and this disorder can be seen through the behavior of the boy, that goes from isolation to alienation.
About the structure of the work
En Kronen Stories Fast-paced dialogue abounds. Most of the novel is made up of conversations, detailed descriptions of fictitious and real places, and a language that, many times, can become profane.
José Ángel Mañas brings up not only the way of thinking of the young people who participate in this title, but also their jargon. The colloquialisms included may seem outdated by now., but they were a trend in the last years of the XNUMXth century.
The book presents a neorealist cut that helps define the feeling of a generation, but the resource that its author uses falls on monotony. Although it is a quick read, only at the end of Kronen Stories a more aggressive tone is introduced. In this sense, the work concludes with the death of one of the protagonist's friends due to an overdose.
On the other hand, the text has been compared to other titles belonging to dirty realism —in the case of this material, it is used as a pejorative term.
The decline and the end
Kronen Stories It reflects the end of one era and the beginning of another. An uncertain future torments young people, who do not fully understand their place within the society that stands at their feet.
In this context, Iron, Carlos's best friend throw a party for his birthday. In it, the boy is forced to drink a whole bottle of whiskey through a funnel. And if that was not enough, his colleagues give him an overdose after playing a bad joke on him: putting cocaine in his virile member.
Fierro was always considered the weakest of the group due to his diabetic condition. In addition, his friends believed him to be homosexual, and they thought that he carried out masochistic activities. With the end of his life also comes the debacle of Carlos, and its expected but terrible insertion into moral and mental decadence.
Tribute to pop culture
One of the outstanding resources that used José Ángel Mañas to set the scene for his work was la pop culture late nineties. Apart from the colloquial slang of the young, readers may come across countless references to movies, books, and music from the era in which the novel is set.
An example of this is that in some sections of the work there are quotes to songs by bands like Nirvana, The, The, Los Ronaldos and Total Loss.
About the author, José Ángel Mañas
Jose Angel Mañas
José Ángel Mañas Hernández was born in 1971, in Madrid, Spain. Mañas is part of the generation of neorealist writers of the nineties. The author enrolled at the University of Madrid, where He graduated in Contemporary History. The first works of José Ángel Mañas are considered cult; however, the literary left a little aside the genre that gave him fame, and he devoted himself to writing historical novels in recent years.
After receiving praise thanks to Kronen Stories, he moved to France, where he lived for a few years until his return to Madrid in 2022. His first opera in the historical genre was The Oracle's Secret (2007) Inspired by the adventures of the leader Alexander the Great. Subsequently, the title was nominated for the Spartacus Award within the five best historical novels.
Other books by José Ángel Manas
Novels
- I am a frustrated writer (1996);
- Bubble world (2001);
- Karen case (2005);
- the skin (2008);
- Suspicion (2010);
- Mutant trees also cry (2013);
- We will all go to paradise (2016);
- Strangers in paradise, the true story of the Madrid Movida (2018);
- Conquerors of the impossible (2019);
- The last spree (2019);
- The hispanic (2020);
- A life from bar to bar (2021);
- Pelayo! (2021);
- Fernán González!, the man who forged Castilla (2022);
- Guerrero (2023)