Death In Spring

By Merce Rodoreda, Martha Tennent (translator),

Book cover of Death In Spring

Book description

Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town—burying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Death In Spring as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Vajra Chandrasekera

Author

Death in Spring is a tiny book containing a bigger, more intricate world than many a doorstopper, for all that the whole story set in a small, nameless hamlet.

Life there too is made of strange, violent rituals, only not the ones we know. We follow a boy growing up and learning them, and being scarred by these mysteries—what do they fill the mouths of the dead with, before they are killed and put into a tree forever? (It’s cement.)

Rodoreda wrote in Catalan, and Tennent’s translation is fluid and beautiful.

Perfection is a rare thing; if you want to…

From Vajra's list on feeling lost and obsessed by a haunted world.