War, So Much War

November 10, 2015novel | pb | 185 pgs5.5" x 8.5" 978-1-940953-22-9 “Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels.”  —Gabriel García Marquez “It is a total mystery to me why [Rodoreda] isn’t widely worshipped. . . . She’s on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer.”  —John Darnielle, The Mountain Goats •  Despite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Mercè Rodoreda published during her lifetime. We first meet its young protagonist, Adrià Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characte