Carn d'olla

Carn d'olla / Meat Stew

Novel , 1978

Proa

Pages: 184

Fastenrath Award 1980

Reissue of the first novel for adults by Jaume Cabré, undoubtedly his funniest and most unusual.

In his distinctive style, Jaume Cabré recounts the picturesque adventures of a peculiar group of emblematic characters from a popular central neighbourhood in the Barcelona of the 1970s, when life was lived out on the streets and the neighbours talked to each other from window to window.

The many memorable characters include a veteran ex-prostitute – the heart and soul of the neighbourhood, the blind man who sells coupons, tobacco and calendars with nude photos, the priest, the witch, and a gallery of healers, barflies, do-gooders, rogues and madams. All of them bubble away in this meat stew, this traditional Catalan carn d’olla, an authentic celebration of diversity in a country that was recovering from the misery of the dictatorship.

“The chaos of a popular Barcelona, oppressed but resourceful, underground, opposed to the authority imposed by the dictatorship, and the street language, reproduced with such panache, and the descriptions, with their human warmth, tragicomic and true to life but dreamlike too.”—From the foreword by Adrià Pujols