Staff Pick
Published a few years before she passed away in 1980 of liver cancer, Mercè Rodoreda's War, So Much War is a picaresque bildungsroman of great sorrow. Set in Catalonia, the author's home region, War, So Much War follows young Adrià and his itinerant wanderings through war-scarred towns, villages, and countryside, encountering a surfeit of horrors tempered by the occasional kindness.
The brutality of Adrià's experiences, despite being mostly removed from the actual fighting itself, convey the torments and forced indifferences of war quite well, and with her evocative and unabashed imagery, Rodoreda lays bare the wasteland that is war – all the while foregoing even a whiff of moralizing. With fantastical elements interplaying with the abundant barbarity and atrocities aplenty, War, So Much War paints a stark picture of a conflict destined to conclude with, indeed, everyone losing. War is hell, as the old saying goes, yet Rodoreda is able to amply portray the pockets of beauty, hope, and generosity which thrive amidst scenes otherwise dominated by bloodshed and belligerence. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels."—Gabriel García Marquez
"Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability."—Natasha Wimmer, The Nation
"It is a total mystery to me why [Rodoreda] isn't widely worshipped; along with Willa Cather, she's on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer."—John Darnielle, The Mountain Goats
Despite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Mercè Rodoreda published during her lifetime.
We first meet its young protagonist, Adrià Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land that one can only suppose is Catalonia, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and with a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characters who offer him a composite, if surrealistic, view of an impoverished, war-ravaged society and shape his perception of his place in the world.
As in Rodoreda's Death in Spring, nature and death play an fundamental role in a narrative that often takes on a phantasmagoric quality and seems to be a meditation on the consequences of moral degradation and the inescapable presence of evil.
Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories—Twenty-Two Short Stories, The Time of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Sea—that would eventually make her internationally famous.
Synopsis
Mercè Rodoreda's final novel, this is a meditation on the consequences of moral degradation and the inescapable presence of evil.
Synopsis
Featured on Jeff VanderMeer's "Epic List of Favorite Books Read in 2015" "Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels."--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability."--Natasha Wimmer, The Nation
"It is a total mystery to me why Rodoreda] isn't widely worshipped; along with Willa Cather, she's on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer."--John Darnielle, The Mountain Goats
Despite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Merce Rodoreda published during her lifetime.
We first meet its young protagonist, Adria Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land that one can only suppose is Catalonia, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and with a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characters who offer him a composite, if surrealistic, view of an impoverished, war-ravaged society and shape his perception of his place in the world.
As in Rodoreda's Death in Spring, nature and death play an fundamental role in a narrative that often takes on a phantasmagoric quality and seems to be a meditation on the consequences of moral degradation and the inescapable presence of evil.
Merce Rodoreda (1908-1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories--Twenty-Two Short Stories, The Time of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Sea--that would eventually make her internationally famous.
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.Maruxa Relaño is a journalist and translator based in Barcelona. She has worked as a translator for The Wall Street Journal, a writer for NY1, and wrote articles for the New York Daily News, Newsday, and New York magazine, among other publications.
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.