Joan Pons

La casa de gel

INFORMATION

NOVEL PRIZE CIUTAT DE ALZIRA

"My name is Simó Vallès and I'm the ugliest man in the world." After studying in Barcelona, Simó returns to Menorca with the triple objective of finding a job, writing a novel and getting married. In love with a beautiful fisherman, he works as a journalist and rewrites the novel that has to make her love him despite his ape-like traits. An effort that guides him in the resolution of his father's best-kept secret. Veteran of the Blue Division, he heard, during the siege of Leningrad, the terrible Russian legend of a capricious empress who married the court jester with a maid, and forced them to spend the night of weddings between blocks of ice. Returning from Russia as a hero, Aristides Vallès decided to protect his son and wife from chilling events at the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Set in present-day Menorca, winner of the XXII Prize for Novel Ciutat de Alzira, La casa de gel, for its synthetic style, fragmented and full of powerful poetic images, is a rare pearl in the panorama of present-day Catalan literature.

Source: the publisher