Rodoreda, Merce

Merce Rodoreda (1908-1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Rodoreda began writing short stories as an escape from an unhappy early marriage, and in the early 1930s she began publishing political articles and wrote four early novels. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories--Twenty-two Short Stories, The Times of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Sea--that would eventually make her internationally famous, while at the same time earning a living as a seamstress.