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5 matches in All Departments
'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' Independent 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. 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
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Death in Spring (Paperback)
Merce Rodoreda; Translated by Martha Tennent; Introduction by Colm Toibin
1
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R291
R235
Discovery Miles 2 350
Save R56 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'Soaringly beautiful, urgent and disturbing... A masterpiece.' Colm
Toibin, 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
The Time of the Doves - by Merce Rodoreda - is the powerfully
written story of a naive shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War
and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul
confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book
has been widely translated, and was made into a film.
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A Broken Mirror (Paperback)
Josep Miquel Sobrer; Translated by Josep Miquel Sobrer; Merce Rodoreda
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R659
R551
Discovery Miles 5 510
Save R108 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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In its moment of great splendor the novel was held as a mirror of
society: Merce 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.
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