Ellinor's Litventures

I read lots of novels in translation and thus it was very difficult for me to decide which one to pick here. In the end I opted for "Die Stimmen des Flusses" by Jaume Cabré (in English the titel would be: The Voices of the River). It has been translated from the Catalan to the German. As far as I know it hasn't been translated into English yet. In my opinion this is an absolute pity and also the reason I picked this novel: I honestly hope that it will be translated into English very soon and more people will know about it.

This novel is just excellent. I came across it by chance: it was the first time that the recommendation feature at amazon was actually useful (usually I just get recommendations for books by the same author, a translation of the book or the paperback version). This is also a novel I have given a lot of times to friends and family and everyone just loved it.

The novel is set in different time periods ranging from the Spanish Civil War to today. It tells the story of what really happened in a small village in Cataluna during that war and how these occurances still affect people today.
The author has a very interesting style of writing: he sometimes changes between the period he narrates and the narrator in the middle of a sentence. In the beginning this makes it a bit difficult to understand what is happening. But after some time you get used to this style and it really gives a special design to the story.