Exploring Catalonian Literature: Introducing A New Seven-Part Series

Honoré de Balzac wrote, ‘Reading brings us unknown friends’. Many of my own such friendships have come about thanks to the beneficence of serendipitous chance, or the imperative urge to engage with minds free from the calcified, culturally normative walls of my own. My book shelves are a heterogenous collection of authors from around the world, echoing Emily Dickinson’s famous quote – ‘There is no frigate like a book to take us lands far away’.

Ann Morgan in her wonderful debut, Reading The World, sets out a persuasive case for sampling the works of authors from around the globe. Morgan writes, ‘publishers ensure that we are never more than a few clicks away from a book that is like a book we like”. She argues that it’s far easier for a reader to stick with what they know, and believes this habituated gravitational pull towards ‘the familiar’, goes some way towards explaining the lack of availability of translated versions of foreign language literature.

Additionally, she makes the point that most publishers have little incentive to discover literature written in languages other than English, for to do so necessities the burden of acquiring rights, finding someone to translate it, and then convince readers to buy a book with its literary roots embedded in the cultural soil of a foreign country.

Whilst we are able to access the venerated literary canons of past Russian, French, Greek and German masters by dint of deftly made literary translations, entire foreign libraries have been kept off-limits to the majority of English-speaking readers.

In essence, our literary world shrinks down to the easily accessible or the well-publicised, with the corollary that an entire panoply of literary treasures hides in plain sight, obscured from view by the fact that their author’s creative voice is other than English. Beyond prohibiting the sheer pleasure of engaging with some of literature’s finest minds, reading books only written in English hastens us as world citizens, to an ever more insular world-view. Quite simply, Dickinson’s ‘frigate’ risks never visiting foreign harbours stuffed full of scintillating literary delights.

One such undeniably important literary ‘harbour’ is particularly difficult to visit: Catalan. In sharp contrast to its other cultural outpourings, its dazzling literary offerings are not widely accessible simply because of the language barrier dividing us and its creators.

We are all familiar and able to engage with many of Catalan’s most celebrated non-literary cultural icons. From opera singers such as Montserrat Caballé to José Carreras and artists such as Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. Picasso, though he hailed from Southern Spain, learnt the Catalan language and considered Catalonia to be his spiritual home. It has also given us other world leaders in their artistic fields, from the architect Antoni Gaudí, the Flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya, and the chef Ferran Adrià Acosta.

Sadly, many of Catalan’s coruscating literary gems have not found their path to our cultural consciousness with anything like the success of their non-literary brethren. Having survived the invidious efforts of General Franco and his vile myrmidons during the Spanish Civil War, to ruthlessly abrogate Catalan’s artistically fecund culture and systematically destroy the very language of its indigenous population, Catalonian literature remains largely inaccessible to us. Having not been translated into English, many of its literary geniuses are therefore entirely unknown to us in all but name.

The list of literary talents denied us is long. To name but a few, this cadre of profoundly significant authors includes the likes of Victor Català, Montserrat Roig, Mercè Rodoreda, Quim Monzó, Pere Calders, Jordi Puntí and Borja Bagunyà. Each one of these groundbreaking authors deserves our attention, and we as readers deserve to experience their works. Literary translation is the vital nexus between us and them, the ‘frigate’ allowing our literary world to expand and in so doing, enriching our own cultural zeitgeist, whilst enabling us to understand that of another population.

One specialist publisher riding to the rescue is Fum d’Estampa. Partnering with a gifted stable of literary translators, they have focussed their invaluable efforts on liberating the works of Catalonian authors past and present, and bringing them to the attention of English speakers across the world. My own journey into Catalonian literature has been entirely facilitated by the creative efforts of this courageous press.

That journey of discovery has led me to enthusiastically share all of my finds with our readers in the form of reviews, and interviews with their translators. I began with Montserrat Roig’s breathtakingly moving The Song of Youth, translated by Tiago Miller. Bel Ovid’s, Wilder Winds translated by Laura McGloughlin shocked my sensibilities, forcing my androcentric cynosure to shatter into a mist of lazy assumptions. I then dived into Jacobé & Fineta by Joaquim Ruyra, translated by Alan Yates, and found myself making comparisons with Conrad and Turgenev.

Next came Wild Horses by Jordi Cussà, translated by Alan Yates. Cussà combined Dirty Realism with a linguistic originality verging upon poetic plasticity as he recounted his experience of the voracious heroin epidemic which ravaged Catalonia and Spain during the 1980s. I’m continuing my almost ineffably wondrous journey with Ruth by Guillem Viladot, translated by P. Louise Johnson, a book exploring the very essence of gender as both a construct and loadstone of identity. I will be delving into Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches, and happily note that it is the first book written in Catalan to be longlisted for the Booker International Prize.

Literary translator, Tiago Miller became the focus of an interview piece which catalysed both a friendship, and the unacknowledged seed for a literary project. Having discovered such a treasure chest of fine literature, I wanted to offer our readers a chance to find out more about something that has provided me with a source of inestimably valuable reading pleasure.


Eschewing the risk of becoming an amour proper, and recognising my own inchoate understandings of both Catalan and its literary culture, I knew I could not give our readers what they deserve alone. As Dirty Harry characteristically reminded us, “A man’s gotta know his limitations”. The only way to give our readers a comprehensive tour of Catalonian literature, was to find a writer with a far greater understanding and appreciation of this topic than myself. Enter Tiago Miller.

This article is the curtain raiser for a series of seven short pieces exploring Catalonian Literature, its roots and the authors who shine most brightly in its firmament. The vast majority of its content has been graciously contributed by Tiago, with me along for the ride. Passage aboard our ‘frigate’ is free, and hopefully the catalyst for your own journey to this most wondrous of literary destinations !