Mercè Rodoreda

Martha Tennent

Colm Tóibín

death-in-spring

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Death in Spring

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Soaringly beautiful, urgent and disturbing... A masterpiece

Mercè Rodoreda's artistry is of the highest order

Read it for its beauty, for the way it will surprise and subvert your desires, and as a testament to the human spirit in the face of brutality and willful inhumanity

Jesmyn Ward, author of 'Sing, Unburied, Sing'

Utterly extraordinary - I have had few reading experiences like it - it's as if one is unravelling a terrible yet irresistible secret, the secret of death

The greatest contemporary Catalan novelist and possibly the best Mediterranean woman author since Sappho

A heartbreaking, unforgettable read. One of the most important literary works from the second half of the 20th century

It is a total mystery to me why [Rodoreda] isn't widely worshipped. . . . She's on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer

John Darnielle, author of 'Wolf in White Van'

One of the most radical works from the past century

The novel is suspenseful, pushing the reader through the images, memories, and voices that flow within the protagonist's often confused mind as he develops into manhood. Just as the unnamed protagonist must navigate a world of contradictions, the novel reflects Rodoreda's own political, social, and literary exile while speaking of a tyranny that feels almost uncanny in its incantation

Mercè Rodoreda is not just one of the most accomplished post-war Catalan authors; she is also widely considered, notably by Gabriel García Márquez, to be the greatest Spanish writer of the 20th century

We must be grateful to the Penguin European Writers series, a precious venture in these dark times

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.

'Soaringly beautiful, urgent and disturbing... A masterpiece.' Colm Tóibín, from the introduction 
 
'Dark and beautiful and brilliant' Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall 
 
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. 
 
'Rodoreda has bedazzled me' Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
 
'Rodoreda's artistry is of the highest order' Diana Athill 
 
'Read it for its beauty, for the way it will surprise and subvert your desires, and as a testament to the human spirit in the face of brutality and willful inhumanity.' Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing 
 
'Utterly extraordinary' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond

'Soaringly beautiful, urgent and disturbing... A masterpiece.' Colm Tóibín, from the introduction 
 
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.

Mercè Rodoreda was born in Barcelona in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she was exiled to France and later Switzerland. Rodoreda was only able to return to Barcelona in the mid-1960s, where she wrote several prize-winning novels in Catalan, including Death in Spring, which was inspired by her experience of Franco's dictatorship. Rodoreda died in 1983, a few years before Death in Spring's first publication, and is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century.

Death in Spring

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