The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda - Softcover

Rodoreda, Mercè

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934824313 ISBN 13: 9781934824313

Publisher: Open Letter, 2011

Synopsis

"The humor in the stories, as well as their thrill of realism, comes from a Nabokovian precision of observation and transformation of plain experience into enchanting prose."—Los Angeles Times

Collected here are thirty-one of Mercè Rodoreda's most moving and challenging stories, presented in chronological order of their publication from three of Rodoreda's most beloved short story collections: Twenty-Two Stories, It Seemed Like Silk and Other Stories, and My Christina and Other Stories. These stories capture Rodoreda's full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating tradition—Rodoreda's "women are notable for their almost pathological lack of volition, but also for their acute sensitivity, a nearly painful awareness of beauty" (Natasha Wimmer).

Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring.

Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

About this title

About the Author:

Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring.

Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Rodoreda (Death in Spring) died at age 75 in 1983, and these passionate stories, selected from her three collections, are set mostly in unnamed provincial European towns and plunge the reader into a narrative maelstrom of longing and loss. Women agonizing in love, characters waiting for life to open to them, wives stricken by the faithlessness of adored husbands, the unsuspecting husband of "Nocturnal" who is pulled into a German wartime drinking fest on the way to finding a phone to call a doctor for his sick wife—these are Rodoreda's troubled protagonists. In "Threaded Needle," a frustrated seamstress frets at the passing of time without a husband and secure future in sight, allowing herself to imagine killing the sick cousin she has been saddled with the care of; he has promised to leave her his inheritance. In "Friday, June 8" a homeless girl ties a rock around her newborn baby's neck—the product of a rape—and tosses it into a river. These are riveting tales by a master in the trenches. (Feb.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Open Letter
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1934824313
• ISBN 13: 9781934824313
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255