The latest addition to my website is Pere Gimferrer‘s Fortuny (Fortuny). Gimferrer is primarily a poet – he wrote only two novels – and this is definitely a poet’s novel. It consists of many small chapters, mainly set in Venice, sensuously described, generally involving historical people from Henry James to Julie Christie, from Émilienne d’Alençon, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Terenci Moix‘s El dia que va morir Marilyn [The Day Marilyn Died]. This book, dedicated to everyone who was twenty the day Marilyn Monroe died, had considerable success in Catalonia and Spain. It tells the story of Barcelona and the era from the 1930s to the 1960s as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ada Castells‘ Mirada [Look]. It seemingly tells the story of a ghost, a former detective, who is obsessed with a beautiful model called Blanca and falls from scaffolding and dies when spying on her. As a ghost he continues to spy on her. He notices a growth on … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Montserrat Roig‘s El temps de les cireres [The Time of Cherries]. It tells the story of Natalia, who has been away twelve years from her home town of Barcelona, primarily in England, and is now returning home, in 1974, aged forty and just eighteen months before the death … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Xavier Benguerel‘s Icària, Icària, a Catalan novel set in Barcelona in 1922 and in the United States some seventy-five years earlier. Clemente Rovira’s father has been arrested by the police, tortured and killed. He joins a group engaged in political assassinations, led by Aurelio who is now in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lluís-Anton Baulenas‘ Alfons XIV : un crim d’estat [Alfonso XIV: A Crime of State]. Though one of his novels has been translated into English, this one, sadly, has not. This one, set in 1962, tells the story of a Spanish general close to Franco, Pozos, and, in particular … Read more
The latest novel on my website is Jordi Coca‘s Sota la pols (Under the Dust). This is a very grim fictionalised autobiography of a boy growing up in the slums of Barcelona during the Franco era. Our unnamed narrator lives in poverty (no running water in their one-room flat), with an abusive father. His younger … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Llorenç Villalonga‘s Bearn o la sala de las muñecas (Bearn or The Doll’s Room; The Doll’s Room). The book has been published in English with two different titles (see above), though the translation is the same. It tells the story of an old Mallorcan noble family, the Bearns. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joan Sales‘ Incerta glòria (Uncertain Glory). This is a long rambling novel but is considered the best Catalan Civil War novel. It focusses on four people. The first is Lluis, an intellectual and a lawyer who lives in his own world, though he has a common-law wife, Trini, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Baltasar Porcel‘s Primaveras y otoños (Springs and Autumns). The novel is set at a Christmas Eve dinner in modern times at Taltavull Hall, home of the Taltavull family, living in Orlandis, Majorca (based on Porcel’s home town of Andratx). The novel tells the stories of several of the … Read more