"Sola pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory." - C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war. But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain - human, animal and other - come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape. This remarkable English-language debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative.

A ferociously imaginative, polyphonic debut: amid the rugged beauty of the Pyrenees, the mountains' inhabitants - both human and non-human - bear witness to the tragedies that befall one family

About the Author
Irene Sola is a Catalan writer and artist, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature, the Documenta Prize for first novels, the Llibres Anagrama Prize, and the Amadeu Oller Poetry Prize. Her artwork has been exhibited in the Whitechapel Gallery. Mara Faye Lethem is an award-winning translator and author. Her recent translations include books by Patricio Pron, Max Besora, Javier Calvo, Marta Orriols, Toni Sala, and Alicia Kopf.

Reviews
When I Sing, Mountains Dance made me swoon. Translated with great musicality and wit, it is rich and ranging, shimmering with human and non-human life, the living and the dead, in our time and deep time; a fable that is utterly universal, deadly funny and profoundly moving -- Max Porter
There's so much beauty in this wonderful polyphonic novel. Each page makes you fall in love again with nature, with imagination, with words, with life. When I Sing, Mountains Dance is timeless and unique -- Mariana Enriquez
Like nothing I've read before. This novel is a feral, yowling love howl to a place of such staggering majesty that it resists usual comprehension. By giving voice to animals, storms, outcasts, one-legged girls, birthing women, and the mountain itself, Sola pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory. -- C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold
Irene Sola is a magnificent writer, When I Sing, Mountains Dance is a creepy, earthy masterpiece -- Camilla Grudova, author of The Doll's Alphabet
Sola's prose, excellently translated from the original Catalan, is expansive and tactile. Her sentences accumulate, running along, taking in as much as possible, senses alert... Sola convincingly implicates everyone in the quickening pace of history and environmental decline... this attentive, playful, responsive novel makes an excellent case for stopping and listening -- Christopher Shrimpton * Guardian *
Mara Faye Lethem's translation magnificently preserves the dreamy, haunting tone of the original... [and] Sola's distinctive lyricism... When I Sing, Mountains Dance illuminates the delicate, mutable relationship we have to the places that dictate how we understand ourselves -- Ella Fox-Martens * TLS *



Book Information
ISBN 9781783788255
Author Irene Sola
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 151g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 12mm