En estas narraciones breves, estampas e impresiones líricas, Josep Pla evoca el mar y la Costa Brava catalana en toda la riqueza de sus matices y describe con penetrante emoción y delicioso humorismo la vida, el ambiente y las figuras de aquella región privilegiada. En el prodigioso arte de Pla se mezclan sabiamente ironía y poesía. Pocos autores contemporáneos han logrado reflejar con tan certero estilo los más huidizos e indefinibles aspectos de la realidad, ni captar tan bellamente el espíritu del terruño o la faz cambiante del mar, con su sombrío talante o su innúmera sonrisa.
Author
Josep Pla i Casadevall (known as José Pla in Spanish) (March 8, 1897, Palafrugell, Girona - April 23, 1981, Llofriu, Girona) was a Catalan journalist and a popular author. As a journalist he worked in France, Italy, England, Germany and Russia, from where he wrote political and cultural chronicles in Catalan. The most important characteristics of the “planian” style are simplicity, irony, and clarity. His works show a subjective and colloquial view, “anti-literary”, in which he stresses, nevertheless, an enormous stylistic effort by calling things by their names and “coming up with the precise adjective”, one of his most persistent literary obsessions. Pla lived completely dedicated to writing. The extent of his Obres Completes - Complete Works (46 volumes and nearly 40,000 pages), which is a collection of all his journals, reports, articles, essays, biographies and both long and short novels. His liberal-conservative thought, skeptic and uncompromising, filled with irony and common sense, keeps sounding contemporary, completely current, even though it seems to contradict the current cultural establishment same as it did with its completely opposed antecessor. His books remain in print and both Spanish and Catalan critics have unanimously recognized him as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
