Balans is an independent publisher of quality non-fiction in the areas of history, politics, economy, biography, science, nature writing, memoirs, current affairs, religion and psychology. With our dedicated team, we publish approximately 40 new titles per year.
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One of our main goals is the consolidation of the Balearic Islands as a structured cultural market, the promotion of the islands' music, performing arts, literature and visual arts by means of grants, international actions and formative seminars in cultural affairs. The Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics coordinates, alone or in partnership with other departments of the Government of the Balearic Islands, the Institut Ramon Llull or the Institut Català d'Empreses Culturals, the institutional presence of the Balearic Islands in strategic events for the promotion of our culture overseas. Every year, our area of literature, thought, comics and illustration calls for grants to cover travelling and accommodation expenses of Balearic authors, and expenses for publishing books and producing promotional material for Balearic authors. Please, check our calls on our webpage for literature grants.
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Adolfo Bioy Casares wurde am 15. September 1914 in Buenos Aires (Argentinien) geboren. 1932 lernte er im Haus der Essayistin und Literaturkritikerin Victoria Ocampo Jorge Luis Borges kennen und zwei Jahre darauf seine spätere Frau Silvina Ocampo, die ihn gemeinsam mit Borges überzeugte, sein Studium der Rechtswissenschaften und der Philosophie aufzugeben und sich ganz der Literatur zu widmen. 1940 veröffentlichte er La invención de Morel (dt. Morels Erfindung, Neuübersetzung von 2003), sein wohl bekanntester Roman und inzwischen ein Klassiker der phantastischen Literatur. 1954, das Jahr in dem seine einzige Tochter, Marta, geboren wurde, veröffentlichte er El sueño de los héroes (dt. Der Traum der Helden), einen seiner durch Thematik, Sprach- und Lokalkolorit 'argentinischen' Romane. Unter den gemeinsamen Pseudonymen H. Bustos Domecq und B. Suárez Lynch verfaßte er mit Borges zusammen zahlreiche Erzählungen, unter anderem die Kriminalgeschichten Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi (dt. Sechs Aufgaben für Don Isidro Parodi). 1990 erhielt Bioy Casares den bedeutendsten Literaturpreis der spanischsprachigen Welt: den Premio Cervantes. Er starb 1999 in Buenos Aires. Gisbert Haefs, 1950 in Wachtendonk am Niederrhein geboren, lebt als freier Autor und Übersetzer in Bonn. Er übersetzte u.a. Ambrose Bierce, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain und Jorge Luis Borges. Als Autor wurde er nicht nur durch seine Kriminalromane um den eigenwilligen Bonner Privatdetektiv Baltasar Matzbach berühmt, sondern auch durch seine farbenprächtigen historischen Romane Hannibal, Alexander und Troja, die allesamt Bestseller waren.
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Ein Ratgeber für das Leben, ein Bestseller seit Jahrhunderten: Mit den Gedanken und Aphorismen des spanischen Jesuitenpaters und Schriftstellers Balthasar Gracian (1601-1658) beginnt die Philosophie der Lebenskunst. Wie finde ich mein Glück? Wie bringe ich mich in Einklang zu meiner Umwelt? Gracians Ratschläge an den einzelnen werden dem menschlichen Alltag gerecht, seine meisterhafte, oft witzige und das Paradox nicht scheuende, blitzende Sprache veranlaßte Arthur Schopenhauer zu einer kongenialen Übertragung: »Sei klug und, weil es klug ist, sei auch, soweit nötig, anständig; dann ist dir jeder Erfolg beschieden, und du wirst für vollkommen gelten.«
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Published in Catalan (Club Editor). Shortlisted for the Médicis Étranger Award 2020 (France). Rights sold: World English (And Other Stories), French (Verdier), Spanish (Literatura Random House), Italian (Nottetempo), Portuguese/Portugal (Confluencias), Galician (Kalandraka). The #1 Catalan bestseller and winner of the Llibreter booksellers prize, poet Baltasar’s debut novel is a forthright study of lesbian sexuality and suicide. Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life. Desperate to get out of Barcelona, she goes to Brussels, ‘because a city whose symbol is a little boy pissing was a city I knew I would like’; as an au pair in Scotland, she develops a hatred of the colour green. And everywhere she goes, she tries to break out of the roles set for her by family and society, chasing escape wherever it can be found: love affairs, travel, thoughts of suicide. Full of powerful, physical imagery, this prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language. It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks of the body, of sex, and of the self.
Short, intense and full of dazzling images, Boulder is the story of a woman who wants to be alone. Life makes it very difficult for her and she betrays herself. After the successful Permagel/Permafrost, Eva Baltasar's second novel explores the contradictions of motherhood. In 2018, Permagel/Permafrost became a 'must-read' thanks to an enthusiastic reception, although it did not have a great advertising campaign behind it. Written with functional prose, the book brought together the lesbian experience and the death wish with a touch of ironical rawness. Translation rights of Permagel/Permafrost were acquired by Literatura Random House (World Spanish, already published), Verdier (France, publication Fall 2020), Nottetempo (Italy, already published), And Other Stories (World English, publication 2021), Kalandraka (Galician, to be published) andConfluencias (Portugal, to be published). Two years later, Eva Baltasar (Barcelona, 1978) has published Boulder, the second novel of the triptych where Baltasar explores the voice, life and body of three women. The book begins with the narrator in Chiloé (an island in Chile, in Patagonia), although she comes from a precarious situation in Barcelona. She flees the city and ends up embarking on a merchant ship and decides to stay there as a cook. One day, when the ship is docked, the protagonist/narrator - nameless throughout the novel - falls in love with Samsa, an Icelandic geologist who ends up taking her to her island and who will call her Boulder. Driven by desire and what she assumes to be love, she leaves the ocean and her work on the ship, to move to land and start a typical life that she does not know if she will get used to. We will accompany Boulder on her journey to the common things: a house, a woman, and a daughter. The normality of a life from which she doesn’t know what to expect. In Iceland Boulder and Samsa will live a more or less conventional life as a couple, but the protagonist will always keep an eye on her old life of isolation in the sea. When, after a few years in Iceland, Samsa tells Boulder that she wants to be a mother we already know that things will not go well because the protagonist has already warned us: "I am not a children person." The protagonist's happiness is based on not feeling responsible for anything or anyone, not hurting anyone and making her life. As Eva Baltasar puts it, “loneliness can be hard, but it also frees you up." Boulder explores other major themes that we could also read in Permagel/Permafrost, such as motherhood and living as a couple, which can enrich you but also end up diluting you in that couple. Through this relationship Eva Baltasar addresses issues such as couple relationships, and how these change before the arrival of motherhood. The author manages to give a twist to this topic and shows us a totally different perspective of motherhood from the one we are used to. It teaches us that there is another reality, another way of seeing it beyond that beautiful and happy stage that we have always been told. It also tells us about sexuality and how desire within a couple is transformed over the years, in a direct and taboo-free way. The landscape is also very important in Boulder: desolate landscapes like the ones we find in Chiloé, the ocean or Iceland. It is those open spaces with few people around that the protagonist likes. To say Eva Baltasar is also to speak of an elaborate, poetic language which makes the story slide smoothly. Boulder also reflects on this, because “language stakes us when we are born and shapes us, governs our cells.” Baltasar thinks that the way we speak also “builds us as people and sometimes we are not aware of it.”
In February 2000, Augusto Pinochet served 17 months in detention in London. The Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón seems to have achieved the impossible, bringing the former dictator to justice and initiating a trial against him for crimes of genocide, terrorism and repeated violations of human rights. Locked up in the English capital, Pinochet’s memories and fears become specters that will soon lead him back to Chile, to his death and beyond.
What is a little monkey by Frida Kahlo’s shoulder doing? What is a lamb looking for among colorful geometric figures? Why is a beautiful young woman painted by Leonardo da Vinci holding a stoat in her arms? How do Magritte’s owl-leaves fly? With the focus on something that usually catches their attention, the book invites children to reflect on the animals present in paintings by famous artists, introducing them, in a didactic and entertaining way, to the fascinating world of paintings. This book-game encourages the young readers to discover, through different cut-outs in the pages, details of paintings representative of the main styles, in a journey through different periods.
Minuet for Guitar is an intense exploration of the horrors of war, of morality and of historical forces propelling men this way and that. Using his life experiences for much of the action in the novel, Zupan introduces us to Jakob Bergant Berk, a man lost in two places and times. Slip-sliding between occupied Slovenia in the 1940s and a Spanish resort in the 1970s, we move from harrowing wartime guerrilla fighting to Berk’s curious encounter with Joseph Bitter, a former German soldier, during vacation in Spain. In the war, Berk is an apolitical non-conformist swept along by events over which he has little control, and some thirty years later, still traumatised by his wartime experiences, he tries to make sense of his memories in discussions with his old enemy Bitter. Once rumoured that it was used by the CIA as a manual for guerrilla warfare, Minuet for Guitar is a powerful examination of war on par with Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, a modern Slovenian classic filled with philosophical ruminations and told in Zupan’s casual, ironic and even seductive voice.
Madrid, winter of 1620. The happiness of the marriage formed by Sebastián Castro, a renowned clerk of the Villa, and Margarita Carvajal staggers when both become the main suspects of a blood libel: lawsuits that blame the Jews for sacrificing Christian children to collect their blood and whose jurisdiction belongs to the Holy Inquisition. With the bonfire hanging over them, their son Alonso, a thirteen-year-old boy, begins a desperate search for a way to save them, a purpose that tears her out of her warm existence and shows her the ice of life. In spite of everything, three headlights turn on light in the shadows of her misfortune: friendship, hope and a dream. Friendship is provided by Juan and Antonio, two rogue vagabonds. Hope beats in a bag full of money that seems to be pulling the strings of destiny. And the dream awaits him in college, where he plans to study law, become a lawyer, and exercise a law capable of preventing innocent people like his parents from suffering the rigors of injustice. Blood Libel is a fascinating story of love and friendship set in Madrid during the Golden Age, a vibrant but bleak time in which, while faith in God lit hearts, crimes against it lit bonfires.
In recent years, Lorenzo Montatore has demonstrated an unusual ability to combine a variety of references. In his works we can see the influence of literary classics, key figures from graphic humour, comics, music and, of course, 8-bit videogames. This all combines to create a highly original approach to the language of comics, praised by fellow industry professionals and critics alike. In 2017 and 2021 he was nominated for the Cómic Barcelona awards in the best new author and best children’s comic categories. Restless and prolific, in addition to collaborations with major publishers, Montatore has created numerous self-published offerings. Obras Incompletas compiles a major part of the fanzines that he has published over the last five years. It also includes unpublished comics and plenty of additional material: photos, sketches, texts providing background to each piece, a complete interview by Gerardo Vilches and a prologue by Rubén Lardín allowing the reader to enjoy a total immersion in the fascinating imaginary world of an author who manages to blend tradition and modernity to make, in Max’s words, “pure comics”.
