Antònia Vicens’ Dry Land translated into German

Valentia has published the German translation of Terra Seca (Dry Land).

Antònia Vicens is a Veteran of Catalan Literature. Since she won the Sant Jordi Award in 1967, with only 26 years of age, she has published over twenty titles characterized by her finely crafted irony and her genuine sense of aesthetics. Some of them have been translated into Spanish, German, or Italian.

Terra seca tells us about the sorrows of a failed politician with high ambitions, a dinner to which the guests will never arrive, a group of women trapped by their condition and a neurotic man that despite being the protagonist of the novel does not take part in the action.

Half way between reality and nightmare, this novel stands as a symbol of the lost dreams of a young and idealistic generation who lived the Spanish political transition into democracy back in the late 1970s.

The novel was originally published in Catalan and was shortlisted for the Ramon Llull Novel Award. It was then translated into Spanish by Planeta.

Antònia Vicens (Majorca, Spain, 1941) was born and brought up in the grey world of the Franco era and the limitations of Balearic society, Antònia Vicens astonished both public and critics alike with her first novel, 39º a l'ombra (39ºC in the Shadow, Sant Jordi prize, 1967), translated into German (Elfenbein Verlag, 2001) and reissued many times in Catalan. Vicens' prose is at once spontaneous and poetic, with a great capacity to recreate Mallorcan speech in literary form. This has been followed by further novels, and more prizes, such as the 1981 Ciutat de Palma Prize and the 1984 Ciutat de València Prize; her latest novel is Ungles perfectes (Perfect Nails, Proa, 2007).
Last year, one of her short stories was included in the anthology Willkomen in Katalonien. Eine literarische Entdeckungsreise (Germany, DTV, 2007).

Tierra seca, by Antònia Vicens
Planeta
180pp

Rights available: World (except German, Catalan and Spanish)