For me it’s gotta be “Morte e Vida Severina”/ “Severino Death and Life”. It’s an epic poem narrating the journey of a poor man from Northeastern Brazil, a famously poor and segregated region that’s frequently affected by severe droughts, fleeing from his home and walking to the big city to survive the season. On the way he describes all the misery he experiences and sees.

One stanza that has stuck with me for years goes something like this "And all of us Severinos/With the same lives/Will die of the same/Severe Severino death,/The death died of/Old age before thirty/Of an ambush before twenty/And of hunger day by day/(Of weakness and plague/The Severino death/attacks at all ages/even those not born)

  • Esper_Enjoyer@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    “Canto jo i la muntanya balla”, by Irene Solà. The title roughly translates to “I sing and the mountain dances”. Maybe not the first novel to come to mind when talking about Catalan literature, but it is easily on the top 3 of my favourite books ever. Sadly, I think it has only been translated into Spanish but, for me, it radically changed the way in which I thought stories could be told. The way she describes the natural world and passage of time, so carefree, so strict yet so beautiful. There is no easy way to describe the book, is such an unique experience that everything I could say would not bring justice to the sheer beauty of the writing. Truly an excellent work.