A Broken Mirror - Softcover

Merce Rodoreda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907970886 ISBN 13: 9781907970887

Publisher: Daunt Books, 2017

Synopsis

'Rodoreda has bedazzled me.' Gabriel García Máarquez

A haunting classic of modern Catalan literature from one of Spain's most prestigious writers.

Extending from the prosperous Barcelona of the 1870s to the advent of the Franco dictatorship and the Spanish Civil War, A Broken Mirror traces three generations of a burgeoning aristocratic family at the turn of the 19th century.

When Salvador Valldaura first meets Teresa Goday he is seduced by her velvety eyes and contagious laughter. Valldaura, a wealthy diplomat, and Teresa, a widowed fishmonger's daughter, marry and move into a grand, sprawling villa on the outskirts of Barcelona. In that house, their family flourishes and fractures across a century of change: from Teresa's second husband and her secret, illegitimate son Masdéu, to daughter Sofia and Sofia's playboy husband Eladi, and son, Ramon, tormented by a heinous act from his childhood and unknowingly in love with his half-sister, as well as several generations of servants, ghosts and even a rodent.

Through a kaleidoscope of perspectives and turning upon events both intimate and historic, A Broken Mirror tells the story of a splintering matriarchal dynasty founded on love, lies, secrets, and betrayals.

Translated by Josep Miquel Sobrer

About this title

About the Author

Mercè Rodoreda (1908–1983) has emerged as perhaps the most important fiction writer of the twentieth century in Catalan literature and is one of the most interesting writers of the contemporary Spanish literary world. She is primarily known in this country for her novel The Time of the Doves, published in English translation. Josep Miquel Sobrer is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University. The editor of Catalan Review, he has also edited and translated an anthology of Catalan texts, Catalonia: A Self-Portrait.

From Publishers Weekly

The works of Catalan writer Rodoreda (The Time of the Doves) are difficult to find in English, and this translation will be particularly welcome to readers of Spanish and European literature. Set in Barcelona, this family saga spans six decades, from the 1870s to the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Teresa Goday, a beautiful young woman with humble origins and an illegitimate child to boot manages to marry a wealthy older man. When he dies she remarries and has a daughter, Sofia, who becomes the heir to Teresa's large estate, where Teresa also plays godmother to her illegitimate son Jesus Masdéu. Sofia marries once she also grows into an alluring woman, but adultery and its results are constant themes, as Sofia's philandering husband brings an illegitimate daughter, Maria, into the household to be reared alongside their sons as a "cousin"-with tragic and haunting results. Murder, suicide, incest and class conflicts abound as the novel's short sections dip back and forth in time; what's impressive is Rodoreda's muted depiction of it all, rendered without authorial judgment.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Daunt Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907970886
• ISBN 13: 9781907970887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 286