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This winter is one of the coldest since 2011, according to experts. There is nothing better than a good fireplace or salamander, a tea or mate and a book to satisfy the soul. But of course, since the audience of this section is varied, we choose different books to satisfy the great reader or the one who is just starting out.
A real fiction and a dystopian novel open this article. Agustina Caride, author of the award-winning Where silence resoundsreturned with a real fiction Let’s go girls! (The Sea, 2024) It is a story about Las Espartanas, the first women’s rugby team in prison. The author enters Unit 47 of the women’s ward, seduced by this unknown and apparently dangerous space. Why are they here? What did these people do? Each chapter luminously reveals the darkness of the prisoners, a darkness that is not empty and has different shades. Preparing to play for Las Espartanas is an escape from the isolation and humiliation to which the prison system subjects them. The coach knows this and that is why she encourages them. Go girls! It is the team’s cry with which they give themselves courage. A great story of discovering oneself, of resilience and leadership.
Gonzalo Garcés surprises us, once again, with a stroke of genius. The Refugee (Six Barral, 2024). This dystopia where Argentina, after a war of secession in the 21st century, is divided into two countries could attract our attention if it were not for the fact that our country could be the inspiration for a Fellini film. In The Refugee, The country is divided in two: one side declares independence and proclaims a new republic, the Free State. A modern and prosperous country. On the other side, the “Argentine” side, marginality, poverty, oppression and insecurity abound. In this context, a journalist announces an explosive revelation: next Monday he will tell the truth on television about the conspiracy that created the Free State. Expectations are enormous, but on Sunday the journalist turns up dead. The contemporary reader will be able to make immediate mental connections to situations that have affected us all. There is nothing better than the reality of our country to inspire fiction. The refugee It is a little gem about a difficult country, one that could be and another that sank into its own dilemmas.
In Parallel Lives (Sudamericana, 2024), Roberto Ulloa traces the stories of travelers who became legends.
In Parallel lives (Sudamericana, 2024), Roberto Ulloa traces the stories of travelers who became legends. The author is a sailor and a veteran of the Malvinas and the book is part of his essence: a journey through historical figures who cross seas and eras. There are stories that intertwine in an astonishing way, where the destinies of characters as diverse as the corsair Hipólito Bouchard, the Iwan Iwanowsky and the whaler George Morgan intersect with those of Victoria Ocampo or Galileo Galilei. Ulloa searches for lost stories that became legends. A book that is a tribute to human curiosity that captivates and teaches us to investigate in the least expected places.
In his first book of stories, “It Could Have Been You,” Tomás Hodgers compiles and expands the stories that made him famous in XInstagram @tomashdg
To investigate leadership issues, The Tale of Leadership by Claudio Reboredo (Dain Usina Cultural, 2023) are a collection of inspiring stories to discover the leader in each reader. The different stories of leaders, anti-leaders, entrepreneurs, people who lose their jobs, restructurings can be read as an independent story where each story is a critical crossroads for leaders and a strategic challenge for the organization. There is a copious bibliography on the topic of leadership, generally on how to be a good leader, skills to be able to stand out and get…get where? Many times we have no idea where we are going, but inertia takes us somewhere. Those places are explored by the author in each story he tells in his book.
We now enter into wonderful personal experiences. Tomás Hodgers is, in my opinion, one of those revelations that happen every now and then. In his first book of stories It could have been you (Amazon.com) Tomás collects and adds to the stories that made him famous on X (formerly Twitter). I discovered him on the social network when at the beginning of the covid pandemic he made a thread with a story about a friend who liked a girl in the supermarket. The thread of the story was frenetic and I couldn’t stop reading it. That’s how Tomás today has thousands of followers on his @tomashdg account and accumulated more than 100 million interactions. These stories of daily life, the kind that executives often lose sight of, are incorporated into this self-published book that is already in its third edition. The new phenomenon of new authors who self-publish and, in addition, do well, is establishing itself in a society that lives from crisis to crisis. The stories in this book are windows that open for laughter and reflection. Each story is a journey that unravels the different facets of people.
In “Late in the Day,” Claire Keegan explores uncomfortable areas of a couple’s intimacy, such as a lack of generosity and even a lack of love.
The intimacy of people is revealed by three exquisite writers. Let’s start with Clarie Keegan, the Irish woman who has given us books such as Antarctica, Three Lights, Explore the Blue Fieldsamong others. Keegan immerses us in rural Ireland and its customs, those that he shows us directly and others that go by without us noticing, but are there. Very late in the day (Eterna Cadencia, 2024), Cathal, the protagonist, stays at the office during lunchtime to get ahead on work, although his mind seems to be elsewhere. He makes silly mistakes and loses the homework he just did on the computer; he feels uncomfortable and observed by the few people he meets in the office. Beneath that monotonous calm his world cracks. Selfishness, boredom, laziness, and even abuse intrude into his relationship with Sabine and the final outcome becomes inevitable. The book explores uncomfortable areas of a couple’s intimacy, such as a lack of generosity and even a lack of love. A sharp book that reflects the impossibility of love in our times when everything overwhelms us and generosity is difficult for us.
The award-winning Magalí Etchebarne offers us a gem like Life ahead (Páginas de Espuma, 2024, Ribera del Duero Prize). A group of women who resist the sordidity of old age and illness; two friends on vacation in an imposing landscape, where darkness and the past lurk like a ferocious animal; two sisters who delay parting with their mother’s ashes in the sea; a couple who live installed in the electricity of permanent conflict. With eyes and ears attentive to the terrible, but also to the beautiful, Magalí Etchebarne’s stories, full of mastery, intelligence and humor, delve into the lives of characters in constant battle with the cruelty of intimacy. Four universes in which tragedy and comedy dance entangled and which portray with skill and irony the harshness of the passage of time, pain in all its forms, and the tireless search for love and illusion. Nothing that cannot happen to the reader of this column.
Many readers who have busy corporate lives move quickly through their careers and forget about their personal lives, which are left behind, like children to whom we do not dedicate enough time. Andrés Neuman wrote Little speaker (Alfaguara, 2024) where the emotions of a father facing his son’s verbal initiation drive the author to write this book full of discoveries, small details that everyday life does not allow us to see. Its pages explore the enigma of basic learning that we often do not remember: starting to walk, talk, forming an identity and organizing our memory. This book belongs to the genre of rare love literature (and rare among unloving managers): that of an astonished father who writes for his son. In the background of the book, Neuman recreates the links between generations, intimate conflicts and dialogues with our family transformations over time.
Luis Mey amazes and provokes us again with Curabichera (La Crujía, 2024). The author presents us with a long-suffering character, Tano, who has suffered from the abandonment and coldness of a family. Tano is one of those people with one foot in different territories: with his parents, under the curve of the General Paz when it becomes the Panamericana, where pollution makes those who live there invisible; and in Villa Rosa, in the countryside, when it was still nothing, pure weeds, snakes and swamps. But the protagonist returns to his neighborhood and that’s where everything is unleashed. The novel serves to not forget the madness of ordinary people, the unexpected enemy and that, illicit associations, no matter how much discourse you want to have, are illicit for some reason. A strong story that exhibits, as if on a shelf, the noblest human aspects and the bestiality that we all carry inside. Almost like corporate life. And if you want more from the author, I recommend La cuestión de mi madre and Las garras del niño inútil, among others, published by Factotum Ediciones.
Finally, if the reader is fed up with everything and everyone and requires a little humor, The best of Tute (Sudamericana, 2024) is an ode to the joy, sarcasm, fine irony and fun that the best Argentine cartoonist of today can offer. The executive readers will surely sketch a sly smile at such an attack on humor, something we always need when confronting daily work.
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