Friday, May 25, 2012

The Time of the Doves by Mercé Rodereda

The Time of the Doves tells about the Spanish Civil War from a working class female point of view using stream of consciousness prose and grippingly vivid storytelling that assaults the senses. It takes place in Barcelona and was written in Catalan. This is maybe the best novel ever, even in translation, like Woolf meets Stein crossed with Graham Greene. Rodoreda seems to carve words as if they are made of physical material to construct a place and time that make you feel you can see, hear and taste the world her characters live. The sadness of history is captured here; you will cry real tears. I've never read anything quite like it. Utterly beautiful and profoundly moving. Life and Death and Love and War.

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