Women in Translation: When I Sing, Mountains Dance

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

Our November meeting of Women In Translation will be discussing Irene Solà's 'When I Sing, Mountains Dance', translated by Mara Faye Lethem.

A ferociously imaginative, polyphonic debut: amid the rugged beauty of the Pyrenees, the mountains' inhabitants - both human and non-human - bear witness to the tragedies that befall one family

When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war.

But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain - human, animal and other - come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape.

This remarkable English-language debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative; a wonderfully unique book – with narrators ranging from a roe-buck to some chanterelle mushrooms.

There's so much beauty in this wonderful polyphonic novel. Each page makes you fall in love again with nature, with imagination, with words, with life. When I Sing, Mountains Dance is timeless and unique

Mariana Enriquez