![]() ![]() Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring. Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Written over a period of twenty yearsafter Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civil War Death in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers. The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless townburying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a floodthrough the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenage stepmother, who becomes his playmate. ![]() ![]() Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. ![]()
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