Pere Calders, born in Barcelona in 1912, grew up during a period of cultural and political exuberance in Catalonia. He studied Fine Art and worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, while also writing stories and articles. During the Civil War, he joined the Republican army as a cartographer. After their defeat, he went into exile in Mexico; twenty-three years later, in 1962, he returned to Barcelona, where he cemented his success as a writer.
Primarily working in the short-story genre, Calders’s distant and ironic style—coupled with a sense of humor tinged with sadness—created a universe of his own that linked him to the worlds of Kafka, Pirandello and Ionesco. His was a universe of absurd events and dreamlike experiences, peopled with characters both funny and deeply symbolic.
«Within the first generation of magicrealist writers, contemporary with Borges,and predating Cortázar or García Márquez.»
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