Camellia Street

A major work from Merc Rodoreda's early, realistic period, Camellia Street is set in war-torn Barcelona of the 1940s and 50s and tells the story of Cecilia, who, abandoned as an infant, ends up fleeing her adoptive family in favor of a more unsettled life of fire-setting, poverty, one abusive man after another, prostitution, and, eventually, a tenuous note of rebirth. Building on the themes of The Time of the Doves , Rodoreda uses Cecilia's difficult life to explore the strength of one woman in the face of male brutality. A classic work of feminist fiction that's as charged today as when it was first published in Catalan back in 1966.