Customer Reviews

My Christina and Other Stories (Graywolf Short Fiction Series)

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For anyone interested in Catalan literature a good place to start is with this book. A female writer who first came to prominence during the first part of the twentieth century, she fled Barcelona following the civil war and settled in Geneva until the death of Franco.

The collection is a series of seventeen short stories written predominately in a monologue style that characterizes her work and ranges from slice of life tales to ones that are more surrealist in nature (a witch who turns into a salamander for example), with most containing a wry humor common in these parts. There is also an underlying melancholy which is explained in the forward written by David Rosenthal. Unlike the more well-know Zafón, they don't so much describe what Barcelona was like aesthetically in those times, but they do provide a glimpse into the life here through rich characters and a keen sense of observation.