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Enter the world as seen through the eyes of Huckleberry Finn--a weary and defeated landscape, but one of inherent hope, where reinvention is possible through the seminal power of words, those elemental beings that are capable of creating realities all their own.
There's sex, there's drugs, and there's rock'n'roll--and all the while, there's a young man's search for wisdom through the beauty of literature and love that he finds along the way.
In a style that combines the avant garde tradition with an authentic adventure-style narrative, the poems of Catalan poet Martï¿1/2 Sales' debut collection Huckleberry Finn usher us in to the primordial experience of giving name to each and every thing, as a means to inaugurate life--or the city of Barcelona, which, in some ways, for Sales and Huckleberry, are one and the same.
About the author
ELISABET RÀFOLS, a Catalan philologist and literary translator, was born in Barcelona, and after living for two decades in Saskatchewan, recently relocated to Montréal. She translates mainly from English and French into Catalan. Her translations from Catalan are always collaborations, the first one being in 1997 with Anne Szumigalski, Governor General's Literary Award winner for
Vindication of Senyora Clito Mestres by Montserrat Roig. Ràfols' most recent translation is
Penso en Yu by Québécoise playwright Carole Fréchette, which premiered in Barcelona in July 2015.
ONA BANTJES-RÀFOLS is a Catalan-Canadian who grew up immersed in translation and theatre. She has always been an avid reader, and this love of literature brought her to translation and editing. She has greatly enjoyed the challenge of this poetic collaboration.
MARTI SALES is a Catalan poet, freelance writer, and translator. He is the author of many books, including
Huckleberry Finn (winner of the Vila de Lloseta Poetry Prize and the first collection of poetry published in Catalan in 2005)
, Dies feliços a la presó (Happy Days in Prison; 2007),
Ara és el moment (Now Is the Hour; 2011)
, and
Principi d'incertesa (Uncertainty Principle; 2015).
Huckleberry Finn, translated by Elisabet Ràfols and Ona Bantjes-Ràfols, is his first book to be translated from Catalan into English. As a translator, Sales has translated books by John Fante, Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Dodge, Shirley Jackson, and Harold Pinter. Sales lives in Barcelona, Spain.
