“Pa negre (Black Bread), one of the most acclaimed works by the Catalan writer Emili Teixidor has landed in Canada and the United States courtesy of the publisher Biblioasis, who this July published its first translation into English.

The work was translated by Peter Bush who is also responsible for English versions of some of the most renowned classics in our literature such as El quadern gris (The Grey Notebook), by Josep Pla and Incerta glòria (Uncertain Glory), by Joan Sales which in recent years have received a warm welcome in the English-speaking market.” Translation by The Spanish Bookstage

Peter Bush Interview 

The Hungry Years in Catalonia: An Interview with Peter Bush about “Black Bread”. By Stephen Henighan (for Words Without Borders magazine), on July 12th.

“Black Bread, one of the major novels of Catalan literature, makes its appearance in English in the Biblioasis International Translation Series this month,  in a translation by Peter Bush. Series editor Stephen Henighan asked Bush about the narrative world of the novel’s author, Emili Teixidor, who grew up  in rural Catalonia under fascist occupation.

Stephen Henighan : As soon as you begin reading Black Bread, you’re aware that you’re in the presence of a major work of fiction. What is the novel’s place in Catalan literature?

Peter Bush : I think Emili Teixidor has written one of the finest novels I know about the impact of the aftermath of civil war on adolescents and their rural community. It happens to be the 1940s, the so-called “hungry years,” in Catalonia, but the experiences can’t be far from those of most young people who find their parents have been defeated and that the victors simply intend to continue the war by other means. Andreu’s retrospective narrative is remarkable in the way it portrays the historic moment—the repression, fear, subterfuge, and deception of adults; the children’s sense of that; and the nervous, edgy excitement that is nevertheless still generated by their games in the forest where bodies and imaginations remain free to explore and interact.”

Read full interview in Words Without Borders