Empordan Scafarlata

Empordan Scafarlata is a mirage of memories written with intelligence, irony, courage and tenderness; linking tradition, modernity, resentment and nostalgia for a mythical country and for that part of the river in which: ‘he will never swim again.’ In a mixture of prose and poetry, Adrià Pujol brings us snippets of Empordà, a region of northern Catalonia wedged between the mountains and the sea, and invites us onto its sweaty, well-trodden, exalted paths. All this he does it by avoiding conventions, clichés and with the sincerity of someone who writes about a world he loves and which for that very reason he does not simplify, rather elaborating it with powerful, eclectic prose, showcasing the writing that has pushed Adrià Pujol to the very forefront of great Catalan writing.

‘Every page is a festival of words, images and sounds; a machine-gun burst of prose and rhyme, through which he immortalises moments, spaces and characters.’

—SEBASTIÀ ROIG, EL DIARI DE GIRONA.

‘The book is a cunning diary, a game by the author with himself, a blending of the journal of a curious anthropologist with the notebook of a perplexed poet. It is the creative exercise of someone who wants to be chronicler of a specific time and ecosystem, and who also has the will to restore a certain cordial relationship with himself.’

—ISIDRE FERRÉ, NÚVOL.