Lluïsa Forrellad: Siempre en capilla [Always In The Chapel]

The latest addition to my website is Lluïsa Forrellad‘s Siempre en capilla [Always In The Chapel]. Forrellad wrote this in Spanish in 1953 (for which she won the Nadal Prize) and then did not write another novel for fifty-three years, her three later novels all appearing in Catalan. It tells the stories of three English doctors working a in a poor, fictitious city in England called Spick, trying to cope with a diphtheria epidemic. They are developing a serum but are unsure of its effectiveness and are concerned with the morality of testing it on animals other than rats and, of course, of testing it on humans (which they finally do). We follow their stressful lives, the multiple deaths of both rich and poor in Spick and their issues with morality. It is a fine novel which, sadly, has not been translated into English.

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