Private Life
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The novel, practically a roman-à-clef for its contemporaries, was a scandal in 1932. The 1960's edition was bowdlerized by Franco's censors. Part Lampedusa, part Genet, this translation will bring an essential piece of 20th-century European literature to the English-speaking public.
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Josep Maria de Sagarra. (2015). Private Life. Steerforth Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Josep Maria de Sagarra. 2015. Private Life. Steerforth Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Josep Maria de Sagarra, Private Life. Steerforth Press, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Josep Maria de Sagarra. Private Life. Steerforth Press, 2015.
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- bioText: Josep Maria de Sagarra (1894-1961) — Catalan Balzac, journalist, theater critic, translator, poet, and novelist — was a force of nature who produced volumes of poetry, drama, essays, and three major novels, which have made him one of the most popular and loved voices of Catalan literature. After winning his first poetry prize in the Juegos Florales, he decided to devote his life to literature. His translated works include Dante's Divine Comedy and plays by Shakepespeare, Molière, and Gogol. He was a member of the Institute of Catalan Studies, the Academy of Letters, the General Council of Authors of Spain, and the council of the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise.
Mary Ann Newman is the former Director of the Catalan Center at New York University, which was an affiliate of the Institut Ramon Llull, and a member of the board of The Catalan Institute of America. She is a translator, editor, and occasional writer on Catalan culture. In addition to Sagarra, she has translated works by Quim Monzó, Xavier Rubert de Ventós, Joan Maragall, and Narcis Comadira, among others. - name: Josep Maria de Sagarra
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- Private Life holds up a mirror to the moral corruption in the interstices of the Barcelona high society Sagarra was born into. Boudoirs of demimonde tramps, card games dilapidating the fortunes of milquetoast aristocrats - and how they scheme to conceal them - fading manors of selfish scions, and back rooms provided by social-climbing seamstresses are portrayed in vivid, sordid, and literary detail.
The novel, practically a roman-à-clef for its contemporaries, was a scandal in 1932. The 1960's edition was bowdlerized by Franco's censors. Part Lampedusa, part Genet, this translation will bring an essential piece of 20th-century European literature to the English-speaking public. - reviews
- premium: False
- source: Nick DiMartino, University Book Store, in Shelf Awareness
- content: "Sagarra plays with the reader, never going where he seems to be heading, presenting a huge, sprawling patchwork fitted together into a mosaic of the end of the aristocratic age. In lusciously exact language, Sagarra painstakingly charts the misunderstandings and crossed signals of privileged human beings greedily, selfishly determined to be happy."
- premium: False
- source: The Irish Times
- content: A "graphic and viciously funny Catalan social satire... This is a risqué novel, sustained by humor and a sleazy elegance, all steeped in ironies... [A] human comedy in the style of Balzac... far racier than Dickens, although Sagarra certainly has the Victorian's flair for creating characters... a sprawling soap opera writ large [that] has a contemporary feel."
- premium: False
- source: Publishers Weekly
- content: "[F]unny and ridiculous, de Sagarra paints a meticulous portrait of the dawn of modernity in Catalonia."
- premium: False
- source: Open Letter, Three Percent
- content: "A rich tapestry... What really makes Private Life a compelling read are Sagarra's vivid details of this crumbling society and his keen observations about it... thanks to Mary Ann Newman and her sparkling translation, Sagarra's masterpiece is finally available in English."
- premium: False
- source: Marina Gusta, University of Barcelona
- content: "[Vida Privada] is a portrait of the "great world" of Barcelona and its loyalties in the years that preceded the Republic and in the early days of the new regime. Rigorous contemporaneity, stylistic effectiveness, the structural tour de force...and its daring treatment of manners and mores, make this book a unique product in Sagarra's work as a whole."
- premium: False
- source: Quim Monzó, best-selling author of Gasoline and A Thousand Morons
- content: "Private Life, by Josep Maria de Sagarra is a delightful, intelligent and exciting novel, the best ever written about Barcelona. One of the high points of 20th century Catalan and European literature, it is an unflinching portrait of the social mores of the high and low classes, the desire to be someone, and the destruction of a way of life. The changes that came about in the 20s and 30s have led inexorably to the Barcelona of today. Now that the city is in vogue, it is providential that the millions of people who visit every year will be able to read Private Life."
- premium: False
- source: Jordi Puntí, NYPL Cullman fellow and author of Lost Luggage
- content: "In Private Life, Josep Maria de Sagarra orchestrates the destiny of a rich, decadent family, sucked into an underworld of sexual and economic scandals. Though the events could be happening today, they take place in the late 1920s, when the night life of Barcelona was as intense and provocative as that of early 20th century Berlin or Paris."
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July 27, 2015
Sagarra’s novel, a scandal upon its original publication in 1932, is a long account of the decadent fall of Barcelona’s aristocracy under the weight of the new wealth and power of the 1920s and early 1930s. The focus is the dynasty of Frederic de Lloberola, the last patriarch of a decayed aristocratic family that is slowly descending into obscurity and poverty. Frederic is “like all the Lloberolas... weak and cowardly”: he becomes more and more indebted and tries to ignore his troubles through passionless affairs, decadence, and maintaining an inflated, corrupt pride. Yet Frederic and the other Lloberolas, including his brother, Guillem de Lloberola, and children Maria Lluïsa and Ferran, are only representatives of the moldering nobility in general. Through a series of debaucheries, the elite of Barcelona are usurped by history and their own vices. No matter what positive turns occur in their lives—whether it is Guillem falling into a fortune, or Frederic being relieved of a debt—the Lloberolas and the nobility hurtle irrevocably toward inconsequence. As their eminence and fortunes vanish before their eyes, the Lloberolas and old aristocrats refuse to change and instead indulge themselves on their way to ruin. At times slow and monotonous, at others funny and ridiculous, de Sagarra paints a meticulous portrait of the dawn of modernity in Catalonia.
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Starred review from July 15, 2015
First published in 1932 and newly translated into English, this is a satirical, multigenerational saga about the intricate relationship between Barcelona's fading aristocracy and the city's sordid demimonde. "Aristocratic cynicism" and "decadence" are the subject matter. Digging deep into the crevices of the highborn Lloberola family while following its moral and financial disintegration, Catalan Sagarra displays none of his American contemporary Hemingway's romanticism in his depiction of Spanish life. Frederic de Lloberola must be one of the least likable protagonists in fiction. As the novel opens, he's already regretting having had sex again with his former mistress Rosa, whom he dumped years ago to marry his rich wife. A hypocritical prig with little wit, imagination, or capacity to care about anyone, Frederic has already pawned his wife's jewels and is less concerned with Rosa than with a note he can't pay back to his wealthy acquaintance Antoni Mates. Fortunately for Frederic, Mates has a very dark sexual secret shared only by Frederic's charming but amoral younger brother, Guillem, who blackmails the debt away with unexpected repercussions. Jump ahead five years, after the great crash, to the start of Republican rule. While Barcelona aristocracy is politically divided, society has become more heterogeneous. Frederic's daughter Maria Lluisa works as a secretary. Unfortunately, her experiment in living as an independent woman doesn't work out the way she-or the sympathetic reader-hopes. Expect murder, revenge, and fallings in and out of love as Sagarra tightens the initially loose connections among his characters. The novel comes most alive when the author digresses from his plot: in his characters' back stories, his ruminations on Spain's socioeconomics, his cleverly vicious bons mots and descriptions (including men as black truffles among pink party dresses), and in some surprisingly graphic sex. Whether Sagarra is anti-Semitic and homophobic or commenting on those tendencies in his characters is troubling but unclear. In this casual, colloquial translation, Barcelona between the wars is full of tawdry vitality, much like the novel itself.COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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- Private Life holds up a mirror to the moral corruption in the interstices of the Barcelona high society Sagarra was born into. Boudoirs of demimonde tramps, card games dilapidating the fortunes of milquetoast aristocrats - and how they scheme to conceal them - fading manors of selfish scions, and back rooms provided by social-climbing seamstresses are portrayed in vivid, sordid, and literary detail.
The novel, practically a roman-à-clef for its contemporaries, was a scandal in 1932. The 1960's edition was bowdlerized by Franco's censors. Part Lampedusa, part Genet, this translation will bring an essential piece of 20th-century European literature to the English-speaking public. - sortTitle
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