Life Embitters

Considered one of the most influential Catalan authors of the twentieth century, [Pla] was born and raised in the Empordà, and over the course of his life wrote over 30,000 pages of prose in which he diligently catalogued the landscape and the life and habits of the people of the region. His complete works, published and republished over the years, contain marvelous descriptive passages that capture the landscape's history and its complex topography at once. --Words Without Borders

Josep Pla was a great noticer of things and places; his gaze was alert and dry; he wrote in a style which registered both the smallest detail and the large picture. His relationship to Catalan identity and Spanish history was complex, often ambiguous. His relationship, however, to the scene in front of him, or the days in which he lived, remains fascinating for its clarity, its sharpness, its originality and its wit. On display in his work is a glittering and sparkling sensibility. - Colm Tóibín

Life Embitters, probably the best book in Josep Pla's vast body of work, is a literary feast which combines all at once his best qualities: the sharpness of the journalist, the modern style of the novelist, and the insight and lucidity of the autobiographical text. Through these stories, Pla distills the experiences of a young man traveling around a dramatically changing Europe. This is the book I recommend whenever someone asks me about Catalan literature. - Jordi Punti