Translation Rights TQE / Feel Like Talking

After a lifetime spent at the homes of “refined ladies” in La Algaida fixing their nails with his haute manicure and offering gossip, chit-chat, and often therapeutic conversation, the manicurist Cigala is officially granted recognition by the townspeople. He is practically considered an institution, and so the city council has decided to name a street after him.

He is enthusiastic to hear the news, and because he constantly feels like talking, he sees fit that the street chosen be the one known thus far as Silence Street. It would be a compensation for everything that he has had to keep quiet, even though that may be hard to believe. Until the event takes place, he will tell everything, day to day, not only to his quiet and senile sister, Antonia, whom he cares for in his own home, but also to his clients, and to himself and the ghosts of his past. He will confront Purita Mansero and all of those who are outraged because Silence Street belongs to the Christ of Silence, and a procession in the Christ’s honor makes its way through the street every Ash Wednesday.

In Ganas de hablar (Feel Like Talking), Eduardo Mendicutti constructs, through passionate soliloquies, the life of a character who sees himself in everyone – women, immigrants, refined people who are no more – and who claims his right to remember everything. He does so through the masterful and colorful use of colloquial language, in danger of extinction, which becomes the other main character of the novel.

About his previous work, California:

“I would almost dare to say that California is Mendicutti’s best book, even more so than El palomo cojo or Los novios búlgaros.” Antonio Fontana, ABC Cultural

“Eduardo Mendicutti is one of the most serious writers in current Spanish literature. He always manages to deepen the wound through the use of humor, frivolity, and the troubles of the heart.” Luis García Montero, El País

“Eduardo Mendicutti will submerge the reader in a fun and provocative parody.” Joaquín Arnáiz, La Razón

“A committed protest novel.” J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, Babelia (El País)

“It is well worth it to approach California.” Enrique Turpin, El Periódico

“Mendicutti achieves what he wanted: fun and emotion.” Aída R. Agraso, Diario de Jerez

“This novel stands out due to its capacity for verbal elaboration.” Joaquín Marco, El Cultural (El Mundo)

Eduardo Mendicutti was born in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) in 1948.  In 1972 he moved to Madrid where he obtained a degree in Journalism and where he has lived ever since. He has won prizes such as the Café de Gijón and Sésamo.  He has published over ten works, all of them enthusiastically received by critics and public alike, and which have been translated into different languages.  Two of his novels, El palomo cojo and Los novios búlgaros, have been brought to the big screen, the first directed by Jaime de Armiñán and the second by Eloy de la Iglesia. His novel El ángel descuidado won the Critics’ Prize in Andalucía in 2002.