Permafrost

"Eva Baltasar is a very interesting voice in Catalan literature. In her case, again, she’s very bold in how she writes. I’ve tried to choose voices that are quite unique and you don’t see many female same-sex relationships in Catalan fiction. She’s very straightforward. But it’s not lesbian fiction. It’s not about the sexuality, although this has brought a number of people to reading her books. This is interesting but it’s not what her literature is all about. She’s a poet and you can see it in her writing: very short sentences. Again, trying to be detached but very touching. A bit dark. She’s a reader of Sylvia Plath and her poetry has been compared to Sylvia Plath’s poetry . It’s this very deep but cool way of saying things and she brings this intimacy to the reader. That’s probably what brought me to mention her. I should mention that in the book there is a lot about suicidal impulses. She is very interested in vital impulses like death and life and the body and sex. It all orbits around very essential things. Permafrost is the first of a trilogy. I have read and loved all three of them. They’re quite disconnected and I don’t quite understand why she considers them a trilogy. Indeed, there is always an important female character as the protagonist and one can see her style across all of her books, but apart from that, the characters are different and the stories are different. She puts her characters in places where they seem to be comfortable but any other person, the reader, wouldn’t be comfortable. I think that’s what I like about her writing as well, it is daring. The third book in the trilogy is quite unapologetic. Mercè Rodoreda is obviously a classic, though not the title I chose. Her most read title is probably Diamond Square , that’s what my generation read at school. Sergi Pàmies is always a bestseller, every book he brings out, also because he is a man who is very often on radio and TV, so that’s extra promotion I guess. Eva Baltasar, yes because I think there was a need for this kind of literature, very much about identity. Marta Orriols won the Òmnium Prize for the best novel of 2018, when her book came out in Catalan. So yes, they’re important, bestselling writers in Catalonia. Yes, the second one is due to come out in August. It’s called Boulder and it’s again translated by Julia Sanches. The third one, Mamut , is as good as the others and I am sure it will be translated into English as well."