Trips
NORTH KOREA DIARY, by Michael Palin. Bookcase, 2020. Barcelona, 175 p. Translation by Joan Eloi Roca.
english actor Michael Palin (b. 1943), a former Monty Python, is an inveterate traveler with several published travel books. In it he records a 2018 foray into one of the most hermetic and controversial countries on the planet: North Korea, ruled by a hereditary dynasty that imposes a cult of personality, compulsory loyalty and permanent militarization. Palin had his problems when it came to photographing and filming, in which they treated him well but from a distance, and from which he left with more doubts than certainties. What he saw, was it staged? His photos of empty roads and restaurants in a country of 26 million inhabitants are surprising. Or knowing that the gigantic statues of his leaders cannot be taken partial photos or from behind.
sports
WHEN IT IS BIG, by Sebastian Moreira. End of Century, 2022. Montevideo, 123 p.
Born in Buenos Aires, Sebastian Moreira (1985) lives here and tells the sports stories of eight Uruguayans who succeeded in different areas: soccer, swimming, jumping, basketball, tennis, judo, and athletics. Triumph, and that is the didactic legacy of the book, is not limited to winning medals, games or television minutes, but to endless intimate tests of overcoming, and above all, dealing with defeat, whether it comes in form of the adversary better, a setback or the passing of the years. The names of Lola Moreira, Deborah Rodríguez, Esperanza Pizarro, Henry Borges, Pablo Cuevas, Emiliano Lasa, Diego Forlán and Tato López are attractive enough.
Social networks
MANIPULATED, of Sheera Frenkel y Cecilia Kang???????? Debate, 2021. Barcelona, 365 pages.
It could be a bomb if the anesthetizing inoculation of the social networks it stopped working for a day. But no, not for an hour. So Frenkel and Kang, authors of Manipulated, will have to settle for having realized what is behind the enveloping world of “likes” that this narcissistic Western society cries out for. And what there is is the old story of domination, control and unlimited economic growth, this time camouflaged in the clothes of freedom through the lens of seduction. The visible managers of Facebook and its satellites—Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg—are the bad guys in this movie.
