Mapped
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Zafón's Barcelona of the postwar 1940s: a fog-bound old town of narrow lanes and antiquarian bookshops, from a hidden library in the Raval and a family shop off La Rambla out to the ruined modernista mansions above the city and the cemetery on Montjuïc.
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The Time of the Doves
Mercè Rodoreda
Natàlia, a working-class woman known as Colometa, tells the story of her life in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, her marriage to the domineering Quimet and his obsession with doves, and the Spanish Civil War that shatters her small world. Rodoreda maps the real neighbourhood: the Plaça del Diamant where Natàlia meets Quimet at a dance, the Gràcia streets and the flat overrun by his doves, the district under the bombs and hunger of the war, and the square she returns to at the end.
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