The Fall issue of the prestigious Massachusetts Review features nine translations from Catalan, of which three shrewd fables by Pere Calders, elegantly rendered by Mara Faye Lethem, connect most clearly with the speculative theme of the issue. Currently confronting its own form of dystopia, Catalonia has both a history and a present of resistance; selections from the Civil War journals of C. A. Jordana give us an unforgettable glimpse into this past, and three excerpts from a novel by Najat El Hachmi illuminate life as an immigrant in its troubled present. These two masterful storytellers were brought into English by contributing editor Peter Bush. Together with the magic of Lethem’s Calders, we see how, within a single literary tradition, imagination, history, and identity fuse in a twenty-first-century nation.

In previous issues, The Massachusetts Review had featured other Catalan writers, such Josep Pla, Francesc Serés, and Teresa Solana.