With an introduction by Helen Oyeyemi
A mesmerising and enigmatic collection of short stories, haunted by the horrors of war, never before translated into English, and divided into two halves: journeys and flowers.
A traveller embarks on a search for what lies beneath reality and finds villages where the dead walk at solstice, silkworm-like women live in cocoons, and a thousand men in gleaming armour play at being soldiers. Thirty-eight stories of invented flowers follow: absurd, lush and dreamlike, they capture different truths of humanity.
Mercè Rodoreda, in these beguiling, uncanny stories, fragments of beauty and darkness, combines inventive force and lyrical power in a poetic voice of indelible magnetism, and confirms herself as one of the greatest Catalan writers of the twentieth century.
‘Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels.’ Gabriel García Márquez
‘The un-self-conscious beauty and the phantasmagoric pain in her work add up to a kind of sharp, transportive pleasure.’ Jia Tolentino
‘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
‘Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability.’ --Natasha Wimmer
‘It is a total mystery to me why [Rodoreda] isn’t widely worshipped . . . She’s on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer.’ --John Darnielle
‘Mercè Rodoreda’s artistry is of the highest order.’ --Diane Athill
‘Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability.’ Natasha Wimmer
‘Rodoreda’s prose . . . is bold and beautiful.’ Jesmyn Ward
‘A lightning strike of a book that leaves behind a drift of violet smoke and a scent of sulphur and mimosa.’ David Hayden
About the Author
Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (1908–1983) was raised in Barcelona. As a vocal supporter of Catalan literature, she was forced into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Among the novels written during her exile was In Diamond Square, which has been translated into over thirty languages, and Death In Spring. Rodoreda was also a keen gardener, painter and poet. In 1972 she returned to Catalonia, where she spent her final years.
Nick Caistor is a British translator. He has translated over 100 novels from Spanish, French and Portuguese. His translations include Eduardo Mendoza’s An Englishman in Madrid, Alan Pauls’s The Past and Dulce Chacón’s The Sleeping Voice, all of which won the Valle-Inclán prize.
Gala Sicart Olavide is a Catalan translator, editor and reader. She has served on the panel of experts of New Spanish Books. Her translations include Mercè Rodoreda’s complete theatre works, Nazlı Koca’s The Applicant and Claudia Goldin’s Career and Family.
