Irene Solà

Near a village high in the Pyrenees, Domènec wanders across a ridge, fancying himself more a poet than a farmer, to “reel off his verses over on this side of the mountain.” He gathers black chanterelles, attends to a troubled cow. And then storm clouds swell, full of electrifying power. Reckless, gleeful, they release their bolts of lightning, one of which strikes Domènec. He dies. The ghosts of seventeenth-century witches gather around him, taking up the chanterelles he’d harvested before going on their merry ways. So begins this novel that is as much about the mountains and the mushrooms as it is about the human dramas that unfold in their midst.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance, winner of the European Union Prize, is a giddy paean to the land in all its interconnectedness, and in it Sola finds a distinct voice for each extraordinary consciousness: the lightning bolts, roe deer, mountains, the ghosts of the civil war, the widow Sió and later her grown children, Hilari and Mia, as well as Mia’s lovers with their long-buried secrets and their hidden pain.

Irene Solà animates the polyphonic world around us, the fierce music of the seasons, as well as the stories we tell to comprehend loss and love on a personal, historical, and even geological scale. Lyrical, elemental, and mythic, hers is a fearlessly imaginative new voice that brilliantly renders both our tragedies and our triumphs.

A Novel

When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Canto jo i la muntanya balla

Els dics

When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war. But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain - human, animal and other - come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape. This remarkable English-language debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative.

M'has parlat i t'he dit que et vaig dir que no et digui

Notes on a novel, or the swimming pool, or the hair, the herb and the bread or the tomato plant

Canto jo i la muntanya balla [I Sing and the Mountain Dances]

A história da trágica morte de Domènec e do luto de sua família em uma região montanhosa da Catalunha. Mas também a de como uma jovem corça descobre motivos para correr e correr e correr, e como sobreviver na floresta. Canto eu e a montanha dança é um livro singular, polifônico, fortemente telúrico, com uma perspectiva rara, alheia ao antropocentrismo e a dramas e angústias cotidianos. Irene Solà cria atmosferas e sensações e borra divisas entre o real e a fábula para cantar uma região nos Pireneus catalães, recorrendo a lendas do local, seus fantasmas, sua flora e sua fauna – que inclui Domènec, Sió, Mia, Oriol, Lluna, personagens agrestes e ricos. A história da montanha que abarca a memória dos séculos, de eras geológicas, conflitos políticos, e a interação com a natureza que a habita. Um livro intuitivo e de uma beleza selvagem.

Irene Solà

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