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Praise for Mercè Rodoreda
“Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability.”
—Natasha Wimmer, The Nation
“Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels.”
—Gabriel García Márquez
“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, The Mountain Goats
“When you read [Death in Spring], 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, NPR
“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
Also by Mercè Rodoreda
A Broken Mirror
Camellia Street
Death in Spring
My Christina and Other Stories
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda
The Time of the Doves
Copyright © 1980, 2015 Institut d’Estudis Catalans
Translation copyright © 2015 by Maruxa Relaño & Martha Tennent
Originally published in Catalan as Quanta, quanta guerra . . .
First edition, 2015
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.
ISBN-13: 978-1-940953-23-6
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Translation of this novel was made possible thanks to the support of the Ramon Llull Institut.
Design by N. J. Furl
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:
Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627
“The sleep of reason produces monsters.”
—Francisco de Goya
“What makes me take this trip to Africa? There is no explanation.”
—Saul Bellow
“A great ravel of flights from nothing to nothing.”
—D. H. Lawrence
CONTENTS
X: The Girl in the Two-Tone Dress
XIII: The Farmhouse
XIV: A Night in the Castle
XV: The Prisoner
XVI: Three Girls and an Orange
XVII: The Man with the Sandwich
XVIII: The Girl on the Beach
XIX: What I Should Have Said
XX: The Woman with the Canary
XXI: A House by the Sea
XXII: A Red Light
PART TWO
XXIII: The Inheritance
XXIV: The Mirror in the Foyer
XXV: I Returned
XXVI: The Three Acacia Town
XXVII: The Cat Man
XXVIII: Pride
XXIX: The Hermit
XXX: Another Farmhouse
XXXI: Matilda’s White Belly
