Institut Ramon LLull

A shot rings out in a snow-covered landscape, and Martí tries to make sense of it, signaling the beginning of his journey away from innocence. His world –a small rural town in the Empordà of the late 1960s– is rife with brutality and secrets, which he translates with the power of his poetic imagination into magical, oneiric images. Yet the conflict between his mother –a bird weary of flying– and his father –a hunter who never rests– will catapult Martí and his family into the city.

This jewel box of a novel captures a dazzling cosmos of tenderness and vulnerablity in a world of what we would now call toxic masculinities, with paternal figures of harshly enforced authority that fear the shadow female ability to see things others cannot. Rosa Font crafts a luminous voice for sensitive young Martí, a communion between nature and language, an inspired path through an infinite forest that will finally lead to illumination.