Journeys and Flowers

Translated from Catalan by Nick Caistor and Gala Sicart Olavide

Introduction by Helen Oyeyemi

A mesmerising and enigmatic collection of short stories, haunted by the horrors of war, and divided into two parts: journeys and flowers.

A lone traveller with no endpoint in sight finds himself journeying through villages where the dead walk at solstice, silkworm-like women live in cocoons and a thousand men in gleaming armour play at being soldiers. Reality blurs, shimmers and darkens; unease grows.

Stories of invented flowers follow and allow nature to bloom, vivid and intoxicating, to the fore. Absurd, lush and dreamlike, they capture different truths of humanity.

In this collection, inventive force and lyrical power come together in a poetic voice of indelible magnetism to create a beguiling, uncanny world – and confirm Mercè Rodoreda as one of the greatest Catalan writers of the twentieth century.

‘Rodoreda has bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels.’ Gabriel García Márquez