The Book Beat reading group will meet Wednesday June 24, at 7:00 PM to discuss War, So Much War by Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda.The meeting is both in store and will also be available by a Zoom link sent the day of the meeting. Our reading groups are free and open to the public. Reading group titles are discounted 15% in store. We apologize for last months failure with our Zoom connection and sound issues. We hope to do better next time.
War, So Much War (Catalan: Quanta, quanta guerra…) is the final novel published during the lifetime of celebrated Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda, first released in 1980. It is a surreal coming-of-age story that follows a young boy, Adrià Guinart, who escapes conscription by wandering into the war-torn, mythical Catalan countryside.
“Rodoreda’s language is effortlessly precise, lavishing detail on everything—nature, dwellings, people, corpses. The tone, both fantastic and melancholy, glides between scenes. The effect is a sense of place simultaneously tangible and timeless.”
—The Harvard Crimson
“Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels.”
—Gabriel García Marquez
Mercè Rodoreda (1908–1983) is widely celebrated as the most influential Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Best known for her international masterpiece The Time of the Doves (1962), she captured the psychological and emotional toll of the Spanish Civil War and the harsh realities of exile