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Mercè Rodoreda

Biography

Mercè Rodoreda was born in Barcelona in 1908. Her father was an accountant and a great lover of Catalan literature. She was devoted to her grandfather and when he fell ill, she had to leave school to look after him. When her uncle, Joan Gurgui, returned from Argentina, she soon married him and they had a child but the marriage was not a happy one. When the Spanish Republic was declared in 1931, she became more involved in cultural activities and started writing, though she later rejected her writings of this period as juvenile. She continued writing when the Civil war broke out but when it ended, she went into exile in France. She started an affair with the poet Joan Prat, which lasted till his death in 1971. The couple stayed in France during the German occupation but not without difficulty. Rodoreda was writing poetry and painting at this time, but not writing fiction. She made some short visits to Barcelona to see her husband and son, but remained with Prat and accompanied him to Geneva, where he was working as a translator for UNESCO. At this time she again started writing prose fiction, and produced novels and short stories. When Prat moved to Vienna, she stayed in Geneva and it was there that she wrote La plaça del Diamant (UK: The Pigeon Girl; US: The Time of the Doves), her best-known work. In 1979 she returned to live in Barcelona and died in 1983.

Other sites

Mercè Rodoreda (In English, Catalan and Spanish)
Mercè Rodoreda
Mercè Rodoreda
A Domestic Existentialist: On Mercè Rodoreda
My Dear, These Things are Life: a Hundred Years of Mercè Rodoreda
Something fled (Colm Tóibín on Rodoreda)
Mercè Rodoreda (in Spanish)
Mercè Rodoreda (in Spanish)
Mercè Rodoreda (in Catalan)
Mercè Rodoreda, els fruits de l’exili (in Catalan)
Any Rodoreda 1908-2008 (in Catalan)
Mercè Rodoreda, escriptora (in Catalan)
Biografia (from Fundació Mercè Rodoreda site – in Catalan)
Mercè Rodoreda: Obra poètica (selection of her poems – in Catalan)

Bibliography

1932 Sóc una dona honrada?
1934 Del que hom no pot fugir
1934 Un dia en la vida d’un home
1934 Polèmica
1936 Crim
1938 Aloma
1958 Vint-i-dos contes
1962 La plaça del Diamant (UK: The Pigeon Girl; In Diamond Square; US: The Time of the Doves)
1966 El carrer de les Camèlies (Camellia Street)
1967 Jardí vora el mar (Garden by the Sea)
1967 La meva Cristina i altres contes (My Christina and Other Stories)
1974 Mirall trencat (A Broken Mirror)
1978 Semblava de seda i altres contes
1979 Tots els contes
1980 Viatges i flores
1980 Quanta, quanta guerra (War, So Much War)
1981 Contes de guerra i revolució
1983 Two Tales
1985 Cartes a l’Anna Muriá
1986 La mort i la primavera (Death in Spring)
1989 Gallines de Guinea
1991 Isabel i Maria
1993 El torrent des les flors
1999 Un café i altres narracions
1999 El maniqui
2002 Agonia de llum
2023 Ells No Saben Res (stories)