Mercè Rodoreda

'A small masterpiece' Colm Toibin, Daily Telegraph'I don't know how many times I have reread the book, including several times in Catalan, with such effort that speaks volumes to my devotion to the novel' Gabriel Garcia Marquez'The fierce beauty of Rodoreda's writing makes it one of the masterpieces of modern European literature' IndependentFirst published in 1962 as 'La Placa del Diamant', this is considered the most important Catalan novel of all time. This is a new English translation. It has previously been published in English as The Time of the Doves.Barcelona, early 1930s: Natalia, a pretty shop-girl from the working-class quarter of Gracia, is hesitant when a stranger asks her to dance at the fiesta in Diamond Square. But Joe is charming and forceful, and she takes his hand.They marry and soon have two children; for Natalia it is an awakening, both good and bad. When Joe decides to breed pigeons, the birds delight his son and daughter - and infuriate his wife. Then the Spanish Civil War erupts, and lays waste to the city and to their simple existence. Natalia remains in Barcelona, struggling to feed her family, while Joe goes to fight the fascists, and one by one his beloved birds fly away.A highly acclaimed classic that has been translated into more twenty-eight languages, In Diamond Square is the moving, vivid and powerful story of a woman caught up in a convulsive period of history.'An extremely moving love story translated from the Catalan, which reveals much about the Spanish civil war as ordinary, non-political people had to live it' Diana Athill'Go along with Natalia on her night out and you'll soon find you'd follow her anywhere. Rodoreda's writing pays such fierce and tender attention to the experience of being alive, and the tempest that ordinary life can be' Helen Oyeyemi

Krossad spegel är historien om ett samhälles politiska och sociala förändring. Förändringarna speglas i en familjs, och framförallt en kvinnas, Teresa Goday de Valladauras, liv i Spanien från sekelskiftet fram till 1930-talet. Teresa kommer från enkla förhållanden, gifter sig rikt med en äldre man och blir en förmögen änka. Kring henne växer barn och barnbarn upp. Men mörka hemligheter och missriktad kärlek leder så småningom till familjens sönderfall. Krossad spegel är den sjunde titeln i Lind & Co:s klassikerserie Palmserien.MERCÈ RODOREDA (1908 1983) var en katalansk författare som debuterade under 30-talet. Efter spanska inbördeskriget tvingades hon fly från Spanien och levde under ett tjugotal år i exil i Frankrike och Schweiz. Rodoreda betecknas ofta som efterkrigstidens viktigaste katalanska romanförfattare.

I en icke namngiven by lever ett namnlöst folk med arkaiska seder och grymma ritualer. Berättarjaget är en fjortonårig pojke, vars mor har dött, som beskriver sin omvärld med alla dess brutala inslag. Pojkens mamma hade för vana att stå och skrika utanför de hus där par tillbringar sin första natt tillsammans. Och männen i byn tvingas simma i den underjordiska floden för att kontrollera att stenarna sitter på plats så att inte byn ska rasa ned i den. Ibland kommer de upp levande, men illa tilltygade eller lemlästade, ibland döda.Bysmeden begraver de döda i träd efter att han fyllt deras munnar med cement. Herremannen som äger byn och bor i ett slott ovanför på en klippa säger i ett avsnitt: "Det är på våren som alla är sjuka och växterna och blommorna blir jordens plåga ... förruttnelsen ... utan grönska skulle jorden vara lugnare." Rodoredas roman berättar i explosivt starka bilder om en kultur och en befolkning som åläggs oförståeliga moraliska koder och våldsamma riter för att stävja självständigheten och lusten hos dem, samtidigt som de lever i ständig skräck för en fiende de aldrig sett.På så vis sällar sig Våren och döden till samma litterära fåra som Aldous Huxleys Du sköna nya värld och George Orwells 1984, men tycks i stället skildra ett ålderdomligt samhälle där livet och döden går hand i hand och tiden avstannat. Rodoreda blandar grymhet med skönhet och har åstadkommit en litterär skapelse som det är svårt att värja sig emot men som är oavbrutet fascinerande.

The novel that defined Merc Rodoreda's most prolific period is finally available in English for the first time. Set in 1920s Spain, Garden by the Sea takes place over six summers at a villa by the sea inhabited by a young couple and their beautiful, rich, joyous friends. They swim, drink, tease each other, and fully enjoy themselves. All the while, the guests are observed by the villa's gardener, a widower who's been tending the garden for several decades. As the true protagonist of the novel, we get to see the dissolution of these magical summers through his eyes, as a sense of darkness and ending creeps in, precipitated by the construction of a new, larger, more glamorous villa next door.Considered by many to be one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Rodoreda has captivated readers for decades with her exacting descriptions of life--and nature--in post-war Spain, and this novel will further her reputation and fill in an important piece of her oeuvre.

A major work from Merc Rodoreda's early, realistic period, Camellia Street is set in war-torn Barcelona of the 1940s and 50s and tells the story of Cecilia, who, abandoned as an infant, ends up fleeing her adoptive family in favor of a more unsettled life of fire-setting, poverty, one abusive man after another, prostitution, and, eventually, a tenuous note of rebirth. Building on the themes of The Time of the Doves, Rodoreda uses Cecilia's difficult life to explore the strength of one woman in the face of male brutality. A classic work of feminist fiction that's as charged today as when it was first published in Catalan back in 1966.

'Soaringly beautiful, urgent and disturbing... A masterpiece.' Colm Tóibín, from the introduction'Dark and beautiful and brilliant' Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall Death in Spring is a dark and dream-like tale of a teenage boy's coming of age in a remote village in the Catalan mountains; a place cut off from the outside world, where cruel customs are blindly followed, and attempts at rebellion swiftly crushed. When his father dies, he must navigate this oppressive society alone, and learn how to live in a place of crippling conformity. Often seen as an allegory for life under a dictatorship, Death in Spring is a bewitching and unsettling novel about power, exile, and the hope that comes from even the smallest gestures of independence. 'Rodoreda has bedazzled me' Gabriel Garcia Marquez'Rodoreda's artistry is of the highest order' Diana Athill 'Read it for its beauty, for the way it will surprise and subvert your desires, and as a testament to the human spirit in the face of brutality and willful inhumanity.' Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing 'Utterly extraordinary' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond

Featured on Jeff VanderMeer's "Epic List of Favorite Books Read in 2015" "Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels."--Gabriel Garc a Marquez"Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability."--Natasha Wimmer, The Nation"It is a total mystery to me why Rodoreda] isn't widely worshipped; along with Willa Cather, she's on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer."--John Darnielle, The Mountain GoatsDespite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Merc Rodoreda published during her lifetime.We first meet its young protagonist, Adri Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land that one can only suppose is Catalonia, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and with a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characters who offer him a composite, if surrealistic, view of an impoverished, war-ravaged society and shape his perception of his place in the world.As in Rodoreda's Death in Spring, nature and death play an fundamental role in a narrative that often takes on a phantasmagoric quality and seems to be a meditation on the consequences of moral degradation and the inescapable presence of evil.Merc Rodoreda (1908-1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories--Twenty-Two Short Stories, The Time of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Sea--that would eventually make her internationally famous.Maruxa Rela o is a journalist and translator based in Barcelona. She has worked as a translator for The Wall Street Journal, a writer for NY1, and wrote articles for the New York Daily News, Newsday, and New York magazine, among other publications.Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Merce Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town--burying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a flood--through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenage stepmother, who becomes his playmate. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society.The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. Written over a period of twenty years--after Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civil War--Death in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers.Merce Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring.Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

First published in 1962 as 'La Placa del Diamant', this is considered the most important Catalan novel of all time. This is a new English translation.

Mit ungewöhnlicher Eindringlichkeit schildert der Roman die Lebensgeschichte von Colometa, einer in Traditionen verhafteten jungen Frau, die im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg ihren Mann verliert und gezwungen ist, ihr Leben in die eigene Hand zu nehmen. Dieser faszinierende Roman machte die katalanische Autorin Merc? Rodoreda weltberühmt. Er wurde in über 20 Sprachen übersetzt und ist heute der Klassiker der katalanischen Literatur. Merc? Rodoreda (1908-1983) lebte während der Franco-Zeit im französischen Exil und begann erst nach ihrer Rückkehr wieder mit großem Erfolg zu schreiben und zu veröffentlichen.

In its moment of great splendor the novel was held as a mirror of society: Mercè Rodoreda shatters that mirror in this, her most ambitious novel, which tells its story in brilliant fragments, a vision reflected and refracted and finally coming together in a richly articulated mosaic of life. Through this Broken Mirror, the reader sees events and characters spanning three generations and composing a kaleidoscopic family history ranging over six decades and turning upon events both intimate and historic—most notably the Spanish Civil War. Opening with Teresa Goday, the lovely young fishmonger’s daughter married to a wealthy old man, the story shifts from one perspective to another, reflecting from myriad angles the founding of a matriarchal dynasty—and its eventual, seemingly inevitable disintegration. A family saga extending from the prosperous Barcelona of the 1870s to the advent of the Franco dictatorship, A Broken Mirror is finally also a novel about the inexorable passing of time.