Irene Solà
When I Sing, Mountains Dance (Canto yo y la montaña baila)
SPAIN
BOOK
The author presents her novel as a score in which she can make each note sound differently, in a new way. Gradually, we hear voices that are very different, belonging to deer, mushrooms, or lightning, but also to human beings. The nooks and vast plains of the Catalan Pyrenees do not form a mere backdrop but indelibly imprint themselves on everything and everyone. Even things purely human, such as storytelling or poetry writing, do not seem inappropriate in this harsh environment. On the contrary, these are ways in which we can connect to what surrounds us.
Published by Euskaldun, 2023
AUTHOR
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Irene Solà (* 1990) comes from the northern Spanish village of Malla. So far, her life’s journey has been linked to many other locations, but her work remains primarily in Catalonia. Her novel When I Sing, Mountains Dance (Canto yo y la montaña baila) won the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature as the first ever Catalan book to receive it. With its reviving the inanimate, highlighting the miraculous and the incomprehensible, and attempting to transcend established boundaries, the novel offers something similar to what magical storytelling used to offer people – a chance to learn the truth about ourselves through fiction.
TRANSLATION
Michal Brabec
