Collected here are thirty-one of Mercè Rodoreda’s most moving and challenging stories, presented in chronological order of their publication from three of Rodoreda’s most beloved short story collections: Twenty-Two Stories, It Seemed Like Silk and Other Stories, and My Christina and Other Stories. These stories capture Rodoreda’s full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating tradition—Rodoreda’s “women are notable for their almost pathological lack of volition, but also for their acute sensitivity, a nearly painful awareness of beauty” (Natasha Wimmer).
Martha Tennent received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Barcelona and served as the founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She has regularly translated between Spanish, Catalan, and English, and her translations have appeared in Two Lines, Words Without Borders, eXchanges, and Review of Contemporary Fiction.