I am often asked for my all-time favorite read; now, this is hard. It’s like picking your favorite record, film, friend, food, etc and one day to the next, it can change over time. But one that is always near the top, and I think the only book to be reviewed twice on my blog, is this book from Peirene Press, in which we follow a young girl as she moves a few miles down the road to a whole new world to her.

Well when asked for my favorite book by Peirene, I always say this one, I sometimes think I may be the only person that thinks it is their best. At the time, when I read it five years ago, it was a perfect book. So I was a bit scared to reread this one. Would it be the same now as it was then? Would I connect with it as I did five years ago?  Well, we will find out in a minute. tThe really sad point of this story is Maria Barbal hasn’t had any more books translated and brought out in English since this one came out, which is a shame!

My aunts and uncle’s house was very big almost as big as my parents’ house  at Ermita .Many years ago it must have been a house full or people and hustle and bustle because it had a ground floor and two storys and then a loft under the roof.

Amazed at the size ,but also how empty the house she has come to work is .

Stone in a Landslide is the story of one woman, well, woman when we first meet her, she is really still a girl, Conxa, who at 13 is sent from her own little village to another village to work for her better-off aunt. This is like being torn from one world to another for the young girl, And then years later, she falls in love with a man, but is this to be cut short by the Spanish Civil War?

They liked everything ; the chorizo and the black pudding, the cuts of ham. They liked the bacon. It’s much tastier than the stuff down there, they would say. I enjoyed seeing how they kept helping themselves to more and the way they used their knives.

Early on in the new village , I choose the same quote as I did in the first review as it shows Conxa’s wonder at her new life .

In my first review, I marveled at the small world of Conxa, how even the short journey from her home village to her aunt’s village,in her eyes, is like moving from one world to another! .I compared it to the Northumberland, England I heard of as a young man working in a day center with the elderly when they used to speak about the small villages and places in and around Alnwick. It struck me the same as Conxa’s world and still did . But now, more than five years ago, has this world gone? When we all look at glowing screens of various sizes, has the village died? Somewhat but through books like this it is kept alive.  A world caught in amber, so to speak, and we are on the outsides looking in at it. So did it hold up to my placing it on Peirene’s pile? Well, yes, it did; is it still my favorite? Yes, it is, so to return to the last part of my review and part of my early reviews, I may bring it back!

Language

English

The writer

Maria Barbal was born in 1949 in Tremp (Pyrenees) and studied Philology in Barcelona where she still lives today. Since publishing Pedra de Tartera in 1985 she has established herself as the most influential and successful Catalan contemporary author, winning numerous awards including the national literature prize of Spain, the Serra d’Or and the renowned Prudenci-Bertrana prize.

Translators

Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell.

Paul Mitchell is a barrister with a doctorate in Persian poetry. With Laura McGloughlin, he co-translated Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal.

Laura McGloughlin is a translator from Catalan who received a MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia in 2006. In 2008, her translation of Luisa Cunille’s three act play The Sale was published by Parthian and the translation of Manel Zabala’s short story Fiesta appeared in New Catalan Fiction by Dalkey Archive Press. Peirene has chosen her from among four sample translations because of the accuracy and respect with which she treated the underlying text.

The writer of the post:

This post is by guest curator Stuart Allen, the blogger behind the blog, Winstonsdad. Stuart is a lover of translated literature and world cinema. He started the #translationthurs hashtag on Twitter and his blog is rated the #1 translated literature blog in the world by Feedspot