The humor in the stories, as well as their thrill of realism, comes from a Nabokovian precision of observation and transformation of plain experience into enchanting prose.Los Angeles Times-----Collected here are thirty of Mercè Rodoredas most moving and inventive stories, presented in chronological order of their publication from three of Rodoredas most beloved short-story collections: Twenty-Two Stories, It Seemed Like Silk and Other Stories, and My Christina and Other Stories. These short fictions capture Rodoredas full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating traditionRodoredas women are notable for their almost pathological lack of volition, but also for their acute sensitivity, a nearly painful awareness of beauty (Natasha Wimmer).-----About the author: Mercè Rodoreda (19081983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short storiesTwenty-Two Stories, The Time of the Doves, Camellia Streetthat would make her inter­national­ly famous, while at the same time earning a living as a seamstress. In the mid-1960s she returned to Catalonia, where she continued to write. Death in Spring, her final novel, is also available from Open Letter in print and ebook.