The biggest festival of Catalan literature is coming to the UK this Spring

26th March 2022

The biggest festival of Catalan literature is coming to the UK this Spring.

This spring, the Institut Ramon Llull is delighted to present the UK’s biggest festival of Catalan language, literature and culture: Spotlight on Catalan Culture. The festival will take place in cultural venues across the UK between March and June 2022, coinciding with Catalan being the protagonist of the Spotlight programme at this year’s London Book Fair (5-7 April 2022).

To showcase the very best of Catalan literature, and foster a conversation between Catalan and English literature, author events with Catalan and British writers – including Max Porter, Irene Solá, Eva Baltasar, Bel Olid, Pol Guasch, Vanessa Onwuemezi – will be taking place across the UK. You can find the full line-up here and there are some great events, some free too!!

To celebrate, we’ve put together a round-up of the best Catalan novels in translation, from classics to the cutting edge of contemporary fiction.

CLASSIC TITLES:

Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoredea

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.

Winds of the Night by Joan Sales

Winds of the Night is the follow-up, published almost thirty years later, to Joan Sales’ acclaimed masterwork of the Spanish Civil War, Uncertain Glory.

It describes the shell-shocked wasteland that was post-war Catalonia through the eyes of Cruells, a Republican chaplain who survives the war, and completes his theological studies only to lose his faith in a world where it seems all hope has been extinguished.

As he struggles to function as a rural priest, his steps are dogged by a ghostly figures from his past, such as Lamoneda, a fascist agent provocateur who now hobnobs with Himmler and misses few opportunities to turn the febrile post-war atmosphere to his financial advantage.

Against his wishes, Creulls is drawn into obsessive dialogues about the war in which only lunacy prevails, for Lamoneda seems to hold the key to the whereabouts of an old friend – the mercurial Juli Soleràs, whose charisma, for all his betrayals, still holds Cruells in thrall.

An essential coda to the modern classic that is Uncertain Glory, Winds of the Night is a Beckettian vision of the traumas of combatants and country hidden beneath the rhetoric of the victors.

Private Life by Josep Maria De Sagarra, Mary Ann Newman (Translator)

In 1932 Josep Maria de Sagarra set out to write the great Catalonian novel, an urban antidote to the rural tales and timid missives about folk customs that had previously prevailed in the Catalonian literature. Private Life was the result: a scathing critique of the decadent and disappearing aristocratic classes hailing from the region. Sagarra’s evisceration of the upper classes was both ruthless and thorough – the impact of their behaviour on everyone from their own kin to the street sweepers they brush past painstakingly chronicled in this volume

The Madness by Narcís Oller, Douglas Suttle (Translator)

Written in nine chapters separated into three blocks, Narcís Oller’s The Madness is one of the first literary pieces of work to aim to truly analyze the social and genetic causes and results of mental illness. Told through the eyes of an anonymous “narrator” character, The Madness tells the story of a young revolutionary called Daniel Serrallonga and his gradual deterioration into madness and delusion. Set against the backdrop of the political crisis that ripped Spain apart in the mid to late 19th century and laid the foundations of the Spanish Civil War, The Madness is a fascinating study of mental health within both rural and urban Catalan society.

As relevant and entertaining now as it was when it was first published, this lively translation brings this fantastic piece of literature to new, modern audiences while drawing parallels with some of the 19th century’s greatest English language writers such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

CONTEMPORARY TITLES:

Barcelona Shadows by Marc Pastor, Mara Faye Lethem (Translator)

CSI meets Jack the Ripper in early 20th century Barcelona: captivating, scary and genre-breaking. In 1917, Barcelona’s infamous Raval district is alive with outlandish rumours. A monster is abducting and murdering young children. The police are either powerless to prevent his terrible crimes,or indifferent to them, since they concern only the sons and daughters of prostitutes. But Inspector Moises Corvo is determined to stop the outrages, and punish their perpetrator. His inquiries take him on a tour of the Catalan capital,through slum, high-class brothel and casino, and end in a stomach-turning revelation. Barcelona Shadows is based on a true story, found by Barcelona CSI Marc Pastor in the archives of the Barcelona police. ‘A winning blend of moody atmospherics and supercharged thrills’ Malcolm Forbes Star Tribune ‘As gruesome as it is gripping… the writing is extraordinarily vivid… Highly recommended.’ Independent’Our creepy storyteller is as compelling as the murderess whose monstrous crimes he chronicles… Pastor makes it all breathe effortlessly.’ Financial Times ‘Blending Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stephenson, Charles Dickens, and Sergio Leone, Barcelona Shadows<\em> is a gothic delight. The city will never be the same again.’ The Conversation<\em><\p><\p>’Brims with the stuff of a classic adventure novel passed through the sieve of post-modernity, and which captivates the reader from the very start. Essential reading for all who love literature.’ Sebastia Bennassar, Diari de Mallorca ‘Blends intrigue, terror and police investigation from an original narrative perspective and with a recreation of the period that evokes the gothic environs of Poe and Conan Doyle.’ Rosa Maria Pinol La Vanguardia ‘A fantastic novel’ Ernest Alos El Periodico Marc Pastor (b. 1977) studied criminology and crime policy, and works as a crime-scene investigator in Barcelona. He is the author of four novels: Montecristo, Barcelona Shadows, awarded the Crims de Tinta prize in 2008, L’any de la plaga and Bioko. Richly atmospheric, his work spans a range of genres, from Sci Fi to Gothic via the adventure novel. Barcelona Shadows is first book published in English.

Permafrost by Eva Baltasar, Julia Sanches (Translator)

Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover, a no-hope employee, and a some-time suicidal student of her own dislocated self. As she tries to break out of the roles set for her by a controlling, overprotective mother, a relentlessly positive sister, and a society which imposes a gut-wrenching pressure to conform, she contemplates the so-called will to live when that life is given, rather than chosen. Attempting to bridge the gap between the perennially frozen reaches of her outer shell and the tender core of her being, watching her relationships with family fracture and her many lovers come and go, the protagonist’s reservations about staying alive become ever more pressing.

Passionate, urgent and breathtakingly forthright, this fiction debut from Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language and is a gift for readers in English.

Learning to Talk to Plants by Marta Orriols, Mara Faye Lethem (Translator)

An immersive, moving novel about complex grief

Paula’s partner has died in a car accident – but no one knows her true grief. Only hours before his death, Mauro revealed that he was leaving her for another woman.

Paula guards this secret and ploughs on with her job as a paediatrician in Barcelona, trying to maintain the outline of their old life. But all of Mauro’s plants are dying, the fridge only contains expired yoghurt and her mind feverishly obsesses over this other, unknown woman.

As the weeks pass, vitality returns to Paula in unexpected ways. She remembers, slowly, how to live. By turns devastating and darkly funny, Learning to Talk to Plantsis a piercingly honest portrayal of grief – and of the many ways to lose someone.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà, Mara Faye Lethem (Translator)

When Domenec – mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer – dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war.

But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life’s struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain – human, animal and other – come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape. This remarkable English-language debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative.

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