‘A small masterpiece’ Colm Toibin, Daily Telegraph
‘The most beautiful novel published in Spain since the Civil War’ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
‘The fierce beauty of Rodoreda’s writing makes it one of the masterpieces of modern European literature’ Independent
I started walking and followed the walls rather than my footsteps, and came to Diamond Square: a box of old houses with the sky for a lid . . .
Barcelona, early 1930s. At the fiesta in Diamond Square, pretty shop-girl Natalia is hesitant when a stranger asks her to dance. But Joe is charming and forceful, and she takes his hand – whirling swiftly into marriage and motherhood in a small apartment, where Joe breeds pigeons on the roof. Then the Spanish Civil War erupts into their simple life. While Joe leaves Barcelona to fight the fascists, Natalia must keep her children alive in a city torn apart by violence and hunger – as one by one, the beloved birds fly away.
This shatteringly vivid portrait of a woman caught up in the convulsions of history is widely acclaimed as the most important Catalan novel of the twentieth century.
‘An extremely moving love story translated from the Catalan, which reveals much about the Spanish civil war as ordinary, non-political people had to live it’ DIANA ATHILL
‘Go along with Natalia on her night out and you’ll soon find you’d follow her anywhere. Rodoreda’s writing pays such fierce and tender attention to the experience of being alive, and the tempest that ordinary life can be’ HELEN OYEYEMI
‘The most beautiful novel published in Spain since the Civil War’ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
‘The fierce beauty of Rodoreda’s writing makes it one of the masterpieces of modern European literature’ Independent
I started walking and followed the walls rather than my footsteps, and came to Diamond Square: a box of old houses with the sky for a lid . . .
Barcelona, early 1930s. At the fiesta in Diamond Square, pretty shop-girl Natalia is hesitant when a stranger asks her to dance. But Joe is charming and forceful, and she takes his hand – whirling swiftly into marriage and motherhood in a small apartment, where Joe breeds pigeons on the roof. Then the Spanish Civil War erupts into their simple life. While Joe leaves Barcelona to fight the fascists, Natalia must keep her children alive in a city torn apart by violence and hunger – as one by one, the beloved birds fly away.
This shatteringly vivid portrait of a woman caught up in the convulsions of history is widely acclaimed as the most important Catalan novel of the twentieth century.
‘An extremely moving love story translated from the Catalan, which reveals much about the Spanish civil war as ordinary, non-political people had to live it’ DIANA ATHILL
‘Go along with Natalia on her night out and you’ll soon find you’d follow her anywhere. Rodoreda’s writing pays such fierce and tender attention to the experience of being alive, and the tempest that ordinary life can be’ HELEN OYEYEMI
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