Celia's Room

By Kevin Booth

Sex, drugs and deception in the Barcelona night.

"Stunning debut: If you like Kerouac or Isherwood, you will love Celia's Room."

An LGBT+ novel about the Barcelona night in a year of sex, drugs and deception. Told through their own eyes, sensitive Joaquim – whose passion for painting will propel him into the artist’s life – and cynical Eduardo – addicted to a nightlife that thwarts his ambition to write – unveil a conflicted, shadowy city, personified by the enigmatic Celia. Despite their violently contrasting natures, Joaquim and Eduardo both fall under Celia’s aura. The games they are learning to play will draw all three into conflict – against the backdrop of a city that is also rehearsing a new identity – leading them inexorably towards the truth of Celia’s Room.

These are the heirs to Jean Genet’s underworld in A Thief’s Journal, a world which Nazario describes brilliantly in El bar Kike y Paca la Tomate and elsewhere. That collection of tawdry gay bars huddled around Plaça Reial in the late 80s and early 90s, long before the Gaixample existed, was perhaps even more vibrant, decadent, drug-fuelled and anarchic than the Madrid movida made famous by directors like Almodóvar – yet no less deservedly famous.

"Nothing is quite as it seems. This book rejoices in ambiguity and ambivalence, successfully capturing the zeitgeist of Barcelona."