La
Ciudad de los Prodigios (City of Marvels) by Eduardo Mendoza
fictionalises the life of the city between its two international
exhibitions in 1888 and 1929. Year of the Flood, by the same
author, is set in Barcelona in the 1950s. La Plaça del
Diamant by Mercè Rodoreda is the best known Catalan novel
and traces the life of Colometa through the turmoil of the civil
war (the English version is called The Time of the Doves). Manuel
Vazquez Montalban's detective character, Pepe Carvalho, is a
Barcelona native, and the city is the setting for the crime
novels in which he stars. Homage to Catalonia (1937) by George
Orwell is the author's first-hand observations of the Spanish
revolution in the region. More recently Colm Toibin's The South
(1990) is a startling first novel, which depicts the struggles
of an Irish woman looking for a new life in Barcelona. Joan
Maragall is the region's most celebrated poet
BARCELONA - Literary notes
