Terenci Moix

Humour, sensuality and ingenuity in Ancient Egypt.  Ipi, a blind boy, and Jonet, a wily rascal, are born in a street in Thebes. In the City of the Sun, capital of the heretic Akhenaten, the one who will become the new pharaoh, Nebkheperure Tutankhamun, is born on the same day. The initially separate lives of these three children, will end up crossing paths thanks to an ingenious plot which culminates in a surprising resolution full of irony and tenderness.

A surrealist accelerated farce in which the idiotic reality of the world of fame and money is reduced to absurdity. A truly grotesque, Hispanic story seen through the lens of the most hilarious, Mae West Hollywood comedy, but also of Groucho Marx, George Cukor and Ernst Lubitsch. However, in the words of the academic Pere Gimferrer, the real theme of this novel is the percussive or high-pitched squawk of Miranda Boronat, millionaire and celebrity who has already appeared in Astrakhan Claws and The Womanliest, and whose voice Terenci Moix borrows to construct his onslaught against superficiality and stupidity.

A worthy heir to Astrakhan Claws, performed only by female aristocrats, ministers, church-lovers, writers and television stars, reaches its most daring heights in the depiction of various contemporary Spanish archetypes, the biggest financial scams and unbridled worship of of money and instant stardom.

With the delicacy of a watercolour painter and the attention to detail of a miniaturist, the writer traces a fascinating portrait of the life in the Nile centuries before Christ. It’s a journey through time, amplified through constant reflections on the movements of the human heart. The grand themes of maturity, death, the ephemeral, love, transcendence through art and divinity are brought into focus through the spiritual feats of the protagonist, the Cretan painter, Keftén. However, The Bitter Gift of Beauty is also a story of a unique spiritual experience: the birth and twilight of the first monotheist religion, advanced by the pharaoh Akhenaton and his queen Nefertiti. The enigma of these two characters takes over this painter, an obsession extended to the city the royal couple built as a symbol of their religious revolt: the city of The Horizon of the Aten.

This novel tells the story of one of the lesser-known sisters of Napoleon Bonaparte: Paulina. This sister led an eventful life that was full of adventures, many of them with lovers. Throughout the book we are witness to the events that lead this woman to visit Europe going one from marriage to the next. She also visited Haiti, when one of her husbands, General Leclerc, was posted there by her brother, Napoleon, during the slave revolts against French rule.

A Barcelona shaken by the turmoil of the seventies, welcomes the eruption onto the scene of the emblematic young writer, Lleonard Pler, a captivating enfant terrible who leaves in his wake many unsolvable mysteries. Was he a vulgar social climber consumed by cynical ambition? Or perhaps a victim of crisis within a culture, ruthless in its actions and even more cynical than him? With an incisive pen, sometimes bordering on cruelty, the author dissects the Catalan cultural world with unprecedented audacity.

In June 1881, a young English aristocrat, a passionate, fatalistic fellow arrives in Cairo accompanied by an eccentric opera singer. Both in love with the same woman, they confront the dramas of the country of the Nile from different perspectives: one dramatic and the other whimsical.  When the Great Sphynx of Giza performs one of the most extraordinary miracles ever witnessed by any traveller, suspense takes off and the action is accelerated by the arrival of new characters, all possessed by unsettling dualities. In the course of a fascinating journey up the Nile, the protagonist end ups having an identity crisis that leads him to resurrect the whole world of the past in order to satisfy his fantasies.  

An eminently urban novel, centred around the universe of the modern woman in 1990s Madrid. The protagonists are various women, who plan and plot in extremely sophisticated, modern environments. Written in high-comedy style, with lively, sparkling dialogues, it is a scathing, even cruel survey of contemporary Spanish reality dominated by overnight celebrities, worship of money and vacuous charades. 

The Dream of Alexandria is an astonishing story that develops from some characters Terenci Moix’s previous novel, Don’t Tell Me it Was a Dream. Starting in the days that followed the deaths of Antonio and Cleopatra, and the fall of Alexandria at the hands of Roman troops, the clash of fates, turbulence of passion, the initiatory search of the protagonist and careful descriptions of locations make this a fascinating read.

No digas que fue un sueño is a novel about all the phases of love, framed in a fascinating historical time period: the death throes of Egypt are being threatened by the imperialism of the almighty Rome. But it is, above all, an attempt to claim the figure of one of the most fascinating women in history: Queen Cleopatra the Seventh.

Often badly represented by the cinema, Cleopatra stands out in this novel as an original and contradictory character. She is no longer the typical devourer of men, but a cultivated woman, maternal, in love and, above all, completely devoted to politics. She’s surrounded by the avatars of the mythical city of Alexandria and the ruins of an Egypt that is perishing.

Through the love of Antonio and Cleopatra, the author presents a precious altarpiece of classical antiquity, making the reader travel to Athens, Rome, Antioch, Judea and, of course to the Upper Nile. Among many other characters, we can find Totmés, a young priest of Isis, Cesarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Augustus, the implacable Roman emperor set on becoming the owner of the world, and Octavia, his noble sister, an example of dedication and strength. With these characters, history and fiction come together to present a splendid altarpiece about love, death and the fall of empires; subjects that are dear to the author.

"For Terenci Moix, Cleopatra's Egypt is a pop dream." Marco Cicala, Il Vendredì

A novel where Medora di Sansepolcro, an opera singer who has decided to be a modern vestal virgin, Zoe la Rouge, Medora’s secretary whose life is totally contrary to the singer’s values and lastly, Robertino Bergamasco, a gay cinephile who suffers from various aesthetic hang-ups, all coexist. These three characters all encounter one another, in all sorts of ways through the pages of Amami Alfredo! which the writer lards numerous winks and nods to the reader.

‘For me, this represents an attempt by me to escape from an oppressive day-to-day world, and travel to lands of fantasy, but especially, to engage with the theme of death and the regeneration of cultures. The theme of onanism, which appears so often in this book, is a symbol of a return to individualism in a society where sex has become mass-produced. This book is also a driven by the power of myth as a return to the will to live and create’. Terenci Moix 

In this novel, an alter ego of the author uncovers his obsessions and encourages revelations, intertwined with a personal erotic irrevocable world view. Thus, solitude, immaturity, rootlessness and the ‘bourgeois feeling of domination’ are some of the themes in the book.

An internationally renowned young singer is kidnapped by masked men in an Egyptian city, and taken to a mythical land filled with fantasy, where cruelty is the only modus operandi. A baroque, fantastical and fascinating text with an underlying critique of political and social phenomenon of our times.

This is a ruthless analysis of the impasse found in the Catalan bourgeoisie – an analysis focussed on the figure of Siro and the other characters – masks that surround him. Moix resuscitates two great themes of Stendhal and Italian opera: passion and lyricism.

This novel is made up of letters that a certain Oliveri Serra i Codolar wrote to a friend who lived in Barcelona. Oliveri Serra writes whilst he travels around Europe, thanks to money left to him in his mother’s will. A bourgeois, bisexual pedantic snob with dreams of artistic greatness. Oliveri is Terenci’s own alter ego, that through this journey and the letters he writes he seeks to develop his own identity and that of his social class, the petty bourgeoisie from Barcelona, a recurring theme in the author’s first novels.

Published in 1969, El día que murió Marylin was considered by critics to be a great revelation and an invaluable generational manifesto, and it received the Serra d'Or Critics' Prize. It narrates the life in Barcelona of two boys who were twenty years old in 1962 and, like in an altarpiece, their childhood and adolescent memories – the cinema, comics, religious education – unfold alongside their parents' memories of Barcelona in the 1930s and the Civil War. 

“A strikingly personal perspective; a sensitivity combined with a traditional and deeply human view of post-war Barcelona, and a brave reflection on the gay condition that makes him a pioneer of the subject in Spain.” Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, La Vanguardia

“Read today, the book is brutal, modern, daring, exciting, excessive, and romantic.” Sergi Pàmies

Written at the age of twenty-one and twenty-two, these are two novels in which the writer recreates scenarios in Rome and Paris, born from the heat of many hours spent in the cinema. He creates his own imaginary (and not so imaginary) nighttime cityscapes where high society elites rub shoulders with the most lumpen elements. He paints a portrait of freedom in the sixties, full of parties, in which nothing was prohibited, but danger lurked everywhere. Both novels revolve around the existence of a crime in which someone is incriminated and is forced to look for the real culprit. However, in only one case is the innocent party able to clear his name. What makes them similar is the investigation of the underbelly of the city and what distinguishes them is the more psychological slant in I Will Kiss Your Dead Body, and the more action-led plot of A Blonde’s Been Murdered in the style of a crime fiction novel. 

Extract from the prologue by Pere Gimferrer ‘What’s exciting about these books is the passion with which they were written; neither book would have seemed different, if years later Terenci Moix had put his name to them. His presence is elsewhere, and not in the approximate translation of ‘Ramón Moix’ by ‘Ray Sorel’. It is in every twist and turn, in every scene or frame, in each section, in every cultural or real-life allusion, in every aspect of the writing. Terenci Moix’s watermark is to be found in these texts in the rigorous way they are through and structured: they will remain as fixed in the imaginary of the reader as they were in the author’s one when he was writing them. They will go on to inhabit the same territory that Macho World and The Blind Harpist inhabit, for all of us, those most surprising Moixidian fables.  

Written at the age of twenty-one and twenty-two, these are two novels in which the writer recreates scenarios in Rome and Paris, born from the heat of many hours spent in the cinema. He creates his own imaginary (and not so imaginary) nighttime cityscapes where high society elites rub shoulders with the most lumpen elements. He paints a portrait of freedom in the sixties, full of parties, in which nothing was prohibited, but danger lurked everywhere. Both novels revolve around the existence of a crime in which someone is incriminated and is forced to look for the real culprit. However, in only one case is the innocent party able to clear his name. What makes them similar is the investigation of the underbelly of the city and what distinguishes them is the more psychological slant in I Will Kiss Your Dead Body, and the more action-led plot of A Blonde’s Been Murdered in the style of a crime fiction novel. 

Extract from the prologue by Pere Gimferrer ‘What’s exciting about these books is the passion with which they were written; neither book would have seemed different, if years later Terenci Moix had put his name to them. His presence is elsewhere, and not in the approximate translation of ‘Ramón Moix’ by ‘Ray Sorel’. It is in every twist and turn, in every scene or frame, in each section, in every cultural or real-life allusion, in every aspect of the writing. Terenci Moix’s watermark is to be found in these texts in the rigorous way they are through and structured: they will remain as fixed in the imaginary of the reader as they were in the author’s one when he was writing them. They will go on to inhabit the same territory that Macho World and The Blind Harpist inhabit, for all of us, those most surprising Moixidian fables.  

Todos los cuentos escritos por el autor a lo largo de su prolífica carrera literaria.

El talento narrativo de Terenci Moix alcanza en El demonio esa rara maestría que confiere el relato la grandeza y la profundidad de las grandes obras. Sirviéndose de algunos elementos propios del cuento gótico, Moix crea un universo regido por el horror de la belleza y la perversión de la santidad.

Los cuentos forman parte del conjunto La torre dels vicis capitals, que en su momento fue saludada como una gran revelación literaria.

Con esta obra el autor consiguió el Premio Victor Català 1967. El libro está compuesto por nueve narraciones, cada una de ella dedicada a alguien, de modo significativo.

Éste no es un libro amable sino implacable, quizá excesivamente implacable. Se trata de una querella generacional: contra una educación recibida, contra una mitología impuesta, contra un pasado conflictivo. Este libro es una ventana abierta a los años sesenta y los cambios culturales y sociales que ocurrieron en España. Si hoy podemos pensar como queremos, decir lo que decimos, en parte lo debemos a autores como Terenci Moix.

Libro de culto entre los miles de aficionados al cómic, Moix analiza – luego de que estudiosos como Umberto Eco dieran categoría artística al género – los antaño llamados tebeos desde un punto de vista social e ideológico, considerándolos manifestación de las formas del arte más nobles.

Según el escritor y académico Pere Gimferrer, este libro «puede leerse como un digest anecdótico y documental de una época, pero es mucho más que esto; es una auténtica obra de arte, insólita por su coraje e implacable por su lucidez». Con una falta de pudor inusual en las letras españolas, Terenci Moix aborda el empeño más arriesgado de su carrera: mostrarse plenamente mientras bucea en lo más profundo de su identidad. En una infancia dominada por el cine, realidad y fantasía establecen un juego sorprendente cuyo objetivo es descender a lo más profundo de una sexualidad atormentada e inconformista.

Compilación de artículos a raíz de su viaje a los Estados Unidos.

Atenas, Creta o Delfos, en Grecia, Kairuán o Cartago, en Túnez y Oaxaca o Teotihuacán, en México, son algunos de los lugares visitados por el autor en su recorrido por estos tres países. Tres viajes románticos que, según sus palabras, “responden a la necesidad omnipresente de encontrar asociaciones míticas distanciadas en el tiempo y el espacio. También cuentan la fascinación por la arqueología, el impacto que sobre mí han ejercido siempre los imperios perdidos”.

Publicadas por primera vez en 1971, estas Crónicas italianas son el testimonio de la profunda huella que dejó en Terenci su estancia en Italia a finales de los años sesenta. Moix descubre en estas páginas diversos artistas del mundo clásico, distintos paisajes, comenta la vida política, social y cultural con una visión crítica, casi demoledora. Narra sus encuentros con Pasolini, con Elsa Morante, con Fellini, sus estancias en casa de María Teresa León y de Rafael Alberti.

La primera incursión de Terenci Moix en la literatura de viajes constituye también una personalísima manera de acercarse a ella. Un viaje sentimental sobre los faraones, mitificados en su infancia a través, sobretodo, del cine de Hollywood. Un viaje a Egipto, en sus palabras, para reencontrase con ciertas partes de sí mismo.

La noche no es hermosa es una especie de museo universal de nuestros horrores, de puesta en tela de juicio de todas las convenciones al uso que tanto y tanto nos oprimen, de búsqueda de la libertad, del placer, del misterio de la creación a través del enfrentamiento del autor consigo mismo y con todos nosotros, sus lectores.

La obra póstuma del autor, que completa su tetralogía dedicada al cine tras Mis inmortales del cine. Hollywood años 30, Años 40 y Años 50. En esta su última obra el escritor abrió el abanico de su particular recorrido fílmico a los actores y actrices europeos más destacados de la década, entre los que destacan Marcelo Mastroianni, Brigitte Bardot, Peter O’Toole, Claudia Cardinale o Sean Connery. Con prólogo de Maruja Torres y epílogo de Elisenda Nadal.

El libro recoge, en 500 fotos en blanco y negro, lo que fue Hollywood durante los años cincuenta. El autor hace un repaso de la filmografía de las que reinaron por su elegancia, de los que triunfaron por su rebeldía, de los galanes y de las ingenuas, de esas mujeres y hombres que durante su adolescencia le hicieron llorar y reír.

El mundo del cine ha ejercido siempre una gran fascinación sobre Terenci Moix, y en la serie de semblanzas publicadas en la revista Blanco y Negro ha explicado magistralmente, con un gran conocimiento del tema y también con su característico humor, el sentido profundo de esta mitología popular gracias a la cual las estrellas de Hollywood han alcanzado un simulacro de inmortalidad en el recuerdo de todos.

En esta serie de semblanzas, Terenci Moix explica magistralmente y con su característico sentido del humor todos los "secretos" gracias a los cuales las estrellas de cine han alcanzado un simulacro de inmortalidad en el recuerdo de todos.

Éste es un libro agridulce destinado a los solitarios, a las víctimas del desamor, pero también a aquellos que, viviendo en el amor, tienen que luchar para mantenerlo... para que no se convierta en el más mortal de sus enemigos. En el tono agudo y emocionante que le es característico -un tono donde la palabra se convierte en dardo-, el escritor expone algunos de sus temas favoritos relacionados con la soledad del ser, la desesperación ante la pérdida de los sentimientos, y la ternura del amor en la memoria.

Libro profusamente ilustrado en glorioso blanco y negro, que lleva por subtítulo La copla y el cine de nuestro recuerdo. Terenci ha buceado en su particular archivo de folclóricas, desde Concha Piquer e Imperio Argentina hasta Marisol y la Pantoja, y lo ha hecho con una mirada cómplice y amable, excepto en el caso de Marujita Díaz. "Es un recuerdo que recuperas", afirma Moix, "pero que también pasas por el cedazo del análisis, y con el tiempo te das cuenta de que hay dos partes, una artísticamente válida y otra muy kitsch".

En esta serie de semblanzas, Terenci Moix explica magistralmente y con su característico sentido del humor todos los "secretos" gracias a los cuales las estrellas de cine han alcanzado un simulacro de inmortalidad en el recuerdo de todos.

Libro sobre la vida de la actriz dominicana que se hizo famosa en la época de Technicolor.

A partir de la fotos hechas por Colita, Oriol Maspons y Xavier Miserachs, los hermanos Moix, Ana María y Terenci, componen una sinfonía con unos pocos textos sintéticos bajo los cuales palpita la Barcelona de los años 80, la Barcelona preolímpica.

• ALBEE, Edward: Una Historia del zoo [Zoo story]. Manuscrit, entre 1959 i 1980.

• FIELDING, Henry: Tom Jones [Tom Jones]. Barcelona: Mateu,1964. 

• LOFTS, Norah: Camino de Belén. 1973 

• SCOTT Fitzgerald, Francis: Tendra és la nit [Tender is the Night]. Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1990. 

• SHAKESPEARE, William: Hamlet. Barcelona: Aymá, 1980. 

• WILDE, Oscar: Salomé [Salome]. Barcelona: Proa, 1995; Barcelona : Galàxia Gutenberg: Cercle de Lectors, 2005.