COLLADO, CARLES ARMENGOL

Invisible lines separate the splendid urban centers from the vast expanses of exposed brick and green awnings. On one of these borders, the one separating Barcelona from L'Hospitalet, lies El Collado, a small eatery serving escudella and fricandó to the workers of the Collblanc neighborhood. It's the 1990s, the era of Barcelona's exuberant, Olympic-era spirit, but El Collado remains a family business that relies on the labor of every member. For the narrator, a child (and later a teenager), the bar counter is a vantage point from which to observe the miseries and virtues of a clientele populated by prostitutes, small-time mobsters, and losers of all kinds. It is also the burden that prevents his family from enjoying the normalcy he longs for, their curse. Carles Armengol uses his experience as a bar boy, an unwitting waiter, and a perceptive observer to shape a hybrid text that is simultaneously a novel, a sociological study, and a personal diary. A text that dissects, through tragicomedy and local customs, the love-hate relationships that generate all family curses.

• Number of Pages: 244
• Binding: Paperback
• Approximate dimensions: 13 x 1.2 x 19 cm