A Bee Furious of its Honey

The vital and creative life of a nomadic, mysterious, and glowing writer.

The work of Mercè Rodoreda—central to modern Catalan literature and no less incisive when it comes to European literature—matches, like a painted and broken mirror, its creative and vital transformations due to wars and exiles from1939 on, when the collective dream of her youth was transformed into a nightmare.

In this living portrait that condenses thirty years of investigations and readings, Mercè Ibarz traces her intertwined life and work and approaches the author as a punk writer, starting with her latest published books—Viajes y flores; Cuánta, cuánta guerra; and La muerte y la primavera—that were under-read and under-appreciated for decades, disconcerting due to their expressive and compositional freedom.

These are texts that have finally found their readers in the present, and with them, the first exile novels—La plaza del Diamante, La calle de las Camelias, or Espejo roto—acquire another dimension, and the value of their stories is confirmed.

Often written from a close-up perspective, Mercè Ibarz explores the cities where Rodoreda lived, the fractures of exile, her aspirations as a woman and a writer, and her absolute dedication to creating lasting work. These are the colors of the vital and creative adventure of a nomadic, mysterious, and brilliant writer.

“A captivating and penetrating profile…In each page, the will to capture Rodoreda’s essence is larger than the desire to reconstruct every one of the lived moments.” —Ana Maria Iglesia, El País

“Loyal, demanding, and committed maturity. No complacency.  As if her gaze was the daughter Miguel Delibes’ Castilian countryside novels’ narrator, but with a sensibility made up of the best modern culture (that of L’amic de la Finca Roja, of the biographical essay about Mercè Rodoreda). Past, present, fracture.” —Jordi Amat