Viking launches Penguin European Writers Series

Viking, an imprint within Penguin General, is launching the Penguin European Writers collection: a new series of forgotten classics by European writers with introductions by acclaimed contemporary authors. Isabel Wall, an assistant editor at Viking who studied French and Italian at university, felt compelled by the current political climate to begin a new initiative to promote European literature to British readers.

The series launches with Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda (with an introduction by Colm Tóibín) on 5th April, followed by The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese (with an introduction by Elizabeth Strout) on 7th June and The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette Leduc (with an introduction by Deborah Levy) on 6 September 2018. 

About Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda 

Death in Spring is a dark and dream-like tale of a teenage boy’s coming of age in a remote and oppressive village in the Catalan mountains. 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.

Mercè Rodoreda was exiled during the Spanish Civil War under Franco’s regime and she is widely regarded as the greatest Catalan writer of the twentieth century. This is the first UK publication of Death in Spring, with a new introduction by the thrice Booker-shortlisted author Colm Tóibín.

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