Pla's stories are generally unadorned and precise in their renderings of both the people and the places of the far northeast of Spain, lives full of hardship and labor-but also their insistence on freedom. A fine introduction to a writer little known outside his native land and who memorably captures its atmosphere. --Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
The grand old man of Catalan letters and one of Spain's most prolific writers.--Chicago Tribune
Josep Pla has long been considered one of the finest writers of autobiographical texts in any of the languages of Spain.--Hispanic Review
Considered one of the most influential Catalan authors of the twentieth century, [Pla] was born and raised in the Emporda, and over the course of his life wrote over 30,000 pages of prose in which he diligently catalogued the landscape and the life and habits of the people of the region. His complete works, published and republished over the years, contain marvelous descriptive passages that capture the landscape's history and its complex topography at once. --Words Without Borders
Josep Pla was a great noticer of things and places; his gaze was alert and dry; he wrote in a style which registered both the smallest detail and the large picture. His relationship to Catalan identity and Spanish history was complex, often ambiguous. His relationship, however, to the scene in front of him, or the days in which he lived, remains fascinating for its clarity, its sharpness, its originality and its wit. On display in his work is a glittering and sparkling sensibility. --Colm Toibin
