Camellia Street

A major work from Merc Rodoreda's early, realistic period, Camellia Street is set in war-torn Barcelona of the 1940s and 50s and tells the story of Cecilia, who, abandoned as an infant, ends up fleeing her adoptive family in favor of a more unsettled life of fire-setting, poverty, one abusive man after another, prostitution, and, eventually, a tenuous note of rebirth. Building on the themes of The Time of the Doves, Rodoreda uses Cecilia's difficult life to explore the strength of one woman in the face of male brutality. A classic work of feminist fiction that's as charged today as when it was first published in Catalan back in 1966.


About the Author

Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring.

David Rosenthal wrote mostly about jazz music and was one of the most influential translators of Catalan in the twentieth century. Along with a number of the works of Mercè Rodoreda, he translated Tirant Lo Blanch, a book Cervantes believed was one of the best ever.

Sandra Cisneros is a Mexican-American writer of more than ten books, including The House on Mango Street.