Institut Ramon LLull

Ten-year-old Elisenda lives in an orchard in a small, square house with a narrow doorway. The field surrounding her home is so vast that no one knows where it ends. The only thing that matters to her is the swing: a wooden plank tied with two ropes and hung by her father from the pine tree outside her bedroom window. When her father suddenly leaves and her mother’s new female partner arrives, her world is thrown into turmoil, bringing with it love, desire and cruelty.

Nearly 15 years on since her last novel, Antònia Vicens returns to fiction with magnetic characters and exquisite prose, woven from the very words that once enchanted her as a child and which we now savour blissfully, each word and sentence gleaming like a small jewel.