Rainy Days / Dias de Lluvia: Short Stories by Contemporary Spanish Women Writers

Writers, publishers, readers and scholars have stopped apologising for the short story: the genre is no longer a bad investment, a trial-exercise for a novel or a minor entertainment, as demonstrated by exceptional writers with an almost exclusive dedication to it, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alice Munro, Quim Monzó or Cristina Fernández Cubas. With deep roots in classic and medieval literatures, and great achievements in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, the genre of the short story, which benefits from the linguistic tightness of poetry and the narrative comforts of the novel, has finally been recognised as having a (hybrid) identity of its own. This volume re-edits and expands a previous bilingual collection published in 1997. The first edition included stories by twelve writers: Pilar Cibreiro, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Paloma Díaz-Mas, Adelaida García Morales, Lourdes Ortiz, Laura Freixas, Marina Mayoral, Mercedes Abad, Rosa Montero, Maruja Torres, Soledad Puértolas and María Eugenia Salaverri. The present edition adds another four: Nuria Amat, Juana Salabert, Luisa Castro and Berta Marsé. The stories gathered in this second edition were written between 1980 and 2010, and testify to the richness and vitality of women’s writing in contemporary Spain. With the original texts in Spanish as well as facing-page English translations, an Introduction, notes, and bio-bibliographical information on each author, this volume is a useful tool for students of the Spanish language and culture at all levels. It includes a selection of secondary reading on Spanish women writers and a selection of anthologies of Spanish short stories since 1997.

Montserrat Lunati is a Reader in Catalan and Spanish Studies at Cardiff University.