US editorial house Open Letter publishes a selection of Mercè Rodoreda stories

New York (ACN).- The American editorial house Open Letter that specialises in foreign literature, published three collections of the tales from Mercè Rodoreda, according to the Ramon Llull Institute (IRL). The IRL is the public body that promotes Catalan culture abroad. It is financed by the Catalan and the Balearic Islands Governments. In fact, the IRL supported part of the book’s translations into English. The book ‘The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda’ has been translated by Martha Tennent and it includes the following tales collections: ‘Twenty-two tales’, ‘It looked like silk and other stories’ and ‘My Cristina and other stories’. It is the second book from Rodoreda published in the US in the last months. In fact, it seems to be an attempt to make masterpieces of the Catalan literature accessible in the English language.

Recently, the American editorial house Dalkey Archive Press unveiled its ‘Catalan Series’, with the publication of ‘The Doll’s Room’ (‘Bearn o la sala de les nines’), from the Majorcan Llorenç Villalonga.

Open Letter is the editorial house from Rochester University, which aims to connect American readers with great international authors and their works. The editorial publishes a dozen books per year and it coordinates the Internet platform ‘Three Percent’, which is in charge of spreading foreign literature in the US.

In 2009, Open Letter already published Rodoreda’s last work ‘Death in Spring’ (‘La mort i la primavera’). The book received a good welcome by American critics and they compared it to Cormac McCarthy’s work ‘Blood Meridian’. For ‘Death in Spring’, Martha Tennent was nominated for the award “Best Translated Book” in 2010.

The IRL already worked with Open Letter on previous occasions, for instance in the publication of ‘Gasoline’ (‘Benzina’) by Quim Monzó. Next July, the collaboration will give another fruitful result: Monzó’s ‘Guadalajara’, a series of tales.