Garden of Seven Twilights

Miquel de Palol (Barcelona, 1953) is one of the signal voices of contemporary Catalan letters. An architect by trade, he began to publish poetry at 19, and averaged a book of verse per year before bringing out El jardí dels set crepuscles, the novel many consider to be his masterpiece, in 1989. The author claims he considers this first work of narrative fiction a continuation of themes pursued in his earlier poetry. Remarkably prolific, Palol has published some forty books, including works of short fiction, children’s stories, and essays, and is a frequent contributor to the Spanish and Catalan press. Adrian Nathan West is the author of The Aesthetics of Degradation (Repeater, 2016) and My Father’s Diet (And Other Stories, 2022) and the translator of thirty or so books, most from Spanish and German; his work has received numerous awards from English PEN and the Austrian Cultural Forum translation prize, and has been shortlisted for the International Booker and the National Book Award. His recent translations include Hermann Burger’s Brenner, Rainald Goetz’s Rave, and Sibylle Lacan’s A Father: Puzzle. He is also a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. His essays and literary criticism have appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Baffler. He lives between Spain and the United States.

“A succession of adventures that follow on through an endless series of stories.”—Ramon Pla i Arxé, El País“A really unconventional jewel that gives exceptional powers to those who exercise control over it.”—Isodor Cónsul, Avui“With this work, Miquel de Palol shows us that he is capable of going back to the roots of the novelistic genre to bring us back that rare flavour we always seek in fiction works. He does so with an ironic form of didacticism which appears impregnated with the empirical poise that characterizes the classics.”—Pere Rovira, La Vanguardia