Sarah Moses' Reading Recommendation

Sarah Moses' Reading Recommendation:

I spent this summer in winter in Buenos Aires. It’s not exactly cold here in the winter, but it is damp and grey, and there is the pandemic. Reading one of the books I most enjoyed this year was a little like living in another place and time, which was in the summer in Catalonia in the 1920s. The book, Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda (translated by Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent), takes place over six summers in a villa on the Catalan coast. It’s the gardener who tells the stories of the villa’s owners and guests, and describes the changes in the flowers and the sea, as the first summer and all the summers pass. What begins as shenanigans and long days of leisure and light, slowly shifts towards tragedy. Still, it’s the book’s atmosphere that stayed with me, rather than what happened to and between the people in it. 

Sarah Moses’ writing and translations have appeared in anthologies, chapbooks, and journals. She co-translated Sos una sola persona by Stuart Ross and Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz, which was longlisted for the International Booker, among other prizes. Her first collection of stories is forthcoming from Quattro Books. Website: www.sarahdmoses.com. Sarah's story "A Trip Home" is featured in the new Spring issue of The Fiddlehead.