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
There has been a lot of discussion recently by and about translators of novels, the fact that they do not get the credit they deserve and are not recognised. This intelligent article on the subject by Katy Derbyshire, a blogger and translator from the German, is one example. She mentions the sort of things we … Read more
British readers and, perhaps, others will recognise the title as a quote from the sitcom Dad’s Army, frequently uttered by Private Frazer. I must say that I never took to Dad’s Army but I know quite a few people who did, so I am aware of the phrase. Other may perhaps recognise it as the … 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
Our weekend in Porto introduced me to José de Almada Negreiros, a Portuguese writer and artist, of whom, I admit, I had never heard before. The Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis is a museum named after António Soares dos Reis, the Portuguese sculptor who left many of his works to the museum, after committing suicide … Read more