HOTEL PARIS Vicent Andrés Estellés

Vicent Andrés Estellés (1924-1993) was one of the finest poets working anywhere in Iberia during the last century. In lyrical terms, his voice resonates with the blunt yet concentrated mastery of his fellow Valencian, Ausiàs March (1400-1459), the patriach of the modern Catalan tradition. The desperate edge to his creative diction may also be explained, however, by his unfailing censure of the totalitarian repression of General Franco’s dictatorship. Hotel Paris takes the microcosm of a meublé or bordello to expose the hardship of the life of ordinary people in the depth of the dictatorship. The account is especially sympathetic to the female condition. With their nation in defeat and their menfolk imprisoned or in exile, wives and mothers of Catalonia were obliged to toil at a variety of jobs – including prostitution – in order to put food on the table for their families. Hotel Paris is a painful but compelling collection and offers the reader creative commitment at its most basic yet inventive.