Translation Rights TQE / Live as You Can

No matter how many times he hears that he must take life as it comes, and how much his healthnut of a wife tries to make him follow a boringly healthy lifestyle, Luis continues to live under constant stress. His first wife, Carmen, has married his cousin Oscar, a social climber who has not only taken his wife from him, but also the job position that Luis was striving for in the wind power company where he works. Between his mother’s many phone calls to talk about her blood pressure, Luis tries to solve his younger son’s conflicts at school, to worry about the problems that his older children have with designer drugs, to come to terms with the fact that he is still in love with Carmen, and to applaud the actions of a peculiar clown whom he comes to know thanks to his children. Meanwhile, the wind turns the blades of the wind turbines like the hands of a clock counting down the remainder of his life. So between growing pains and experiences that set him at the limit, the unstable balance of the initial situation becomes an uncontrollable imbalance full of hilarious turns. Berges offers us a very funny sitcom where he once again manages to interweave the comical and the profoundly moving.

Joaquín Berges was born in Zaragoza in 1965. He has a degree in Spanish Language and Literature from his city’s university. He has worked on the production of popular science programs for television and has developed a career in the commercial department of an important Spanish company. He claims that El club de los estrellados brings together two of his passions: astronomy and the music of Bach, but the reader will quickly discover that this first novel – surprising and lively – reveals a natural-born storyteller who is capable of interweaving all kinds of events while alternating the comical, the pathetic and the deeply moving, as can only be done by the best narrators.