Spanish publisher unearths 'forgotten books' for re-launch...and asks readers for ideas

A SPANISH start-up firm has launched as a book shop selling works which have been 'forgotten', censored or largely out of print in a bid to bring unknown authors back into the spotlight. 

Jan Arimany began Trotalibros as a book-review blog and then expanded into YouTube – where he has 12,500 bookworms among his followers – has based his enterprise largely in Barcelona, Vigo (Galicia) and Andorra, and says the project is 'a dream come true'. 

After graduating in law and working for a legal firm, Arimany completed a master's degree in international publishing at London's City University, which he is putting to good use – although the books he sells are mostly in Spanish, he is likely to be able to source these works in other languages upon request.

Arimany's first 'unknown' writing is by the Greek poet Nikos Kavvadias, who was born in 1910 and lived to be just 65 – the author's only novel, The Shift, printed in 1954, narrates night-shift Greek sailors' personal tales and is a combination of fact and fiction, as well as parts that are halfway between the two.

The Shift is the first work Arimany acquired for his 'Piteas' collection, through which he aims to 'unearth timeless books, dust them off and give them another chance to conquer readers'.

He plans to publish Kavvadias' sole novel on January 20.

In February, the next work Arimany plans to publish is by the late Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas, who was born in Telemark and died aged 72 in Oslo in 1970.

The 1963 novel The Ice Palace (Is-slottet) won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and is a dark tale of two young schoolgirls who nearly become romantically involved with each other before embarrassment stops them, one of them goes missing and the other, traumatised, becomes mute – its on-screen adaptation was premièred at Flanders International Film Festival in 1988.

All books published by Trotalibros will include an epilogue written by Arimany, explaining the significance of the work in question, what it has meant to him as publisher, the editorial process he went through, and why he decided to release it.

Anyone else who knows of a 'forgotten book', or one that is 'unfairly out of print', can suggest it to Arimany on the Trotalibros website and he will try to source them for publication – if he manages to do this, the person who gave him the idea for the book in question will have their name included in the epilogue.