Articles in Asymptote Journal Oct 2018 Special Feature on Catalan Fiction:

Manuel Baixaulí, from The Fifth Floor

Translated from the Catalan by Adrian Nathan West

Najat El Hachmi, from Mother of Milk and Honey

Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush

Cèlia Suñol, from First Part

Translated from the Catalan by Mary Ann Newman

Marta Rojals, from Spring, Summer, etc.

Translated from the Catalan by Mary Ann Newman

Neus Canyelles, The Lady with the Little Dog, by Anton Chekhov

Translated from the Catalan by Marlena Gittleman

J. V. Foix, Notes on El Port de la Selva

Translated from the Catalan by Lawrence Venuti

Here’s a snippet of J. V. Foix’s Notes on El Port de la Selva, translated by Lawrence Venuti:

Stretched out on the endless beach, I saw how the raging waves hurled a body identical to mine, in a fossilized state. I sought, in vain, to stand up. Pseudomorphized, my body was a dense fabric of stony snails, antediluvian clams, delicious bleached miniatures of animals that have grown extinct. In the depths of rare interstices, a transparent membrane revealed marvelous underwater landscapes where the signs of the zodiac were floating luminous. Through the dark passageway crossing the rock Teiera, which facing east encloses the horizon, an extraordinary procession of monsters advanced: octopuses with camel feet, giants with horse heads, Herculean hands supported by the thinnest ostrich legs, eyes with phosphorescent corneas between enormous scaly eyelashes. If only the sea, transformed into a single black wave, might cover the entire earth! But the sea, in its transition at dusk, is a vast slab of onyx, whereon stars reflect their flaming red arteries and trace mysterious, inaccessible deltas.