The first title of the series to be published is Llorenç Villalonga's much-loved novel The Dolls' Room, translated by Deborah Bonner and now available to order online. Widely regarded as one of the seminal Catalan-language texts of the last century, the novel recounts the scandalous lives and mysterious deaths of Don Toni and Doña Maria Antònia, the final members of a long line of aristocrats in the town of Bearn.
Next year will see socially-committed Mallorcan poet and author Miquel Bauçà's three novels published as a single volume before a translation of Adriadna in the Grotesque Labyrinth by Salvador Espriu is released. Written in 1935 when the author was just twenty-two, Adriadna is a collection of politically charged stories heavily influenced by the looming civil war that would soon tear Spain apart, and is one of the works that established Espriu as a hugely important figure in Iberian letters, revered by public and critics alike.
Planned to run until 2013, the project is supported by the Institut Ramon Llull, a consortium dedicated to the international promotion of Catalan language and culture. With similar series of Hebrew, Swiss, Slovenian and Norwegian titles planned for publication, Dalkey's National Literature collections are a commendable effort to integrate the all-too-often ignored masterpieces of smaller nations and cultures into the realm of popular world literature.
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