Two standpoints govern the approach taken to the poetry of Salvador Espriu in this extended study of his work. First, the author explores the structural implications of symmetry and numerology, in a chronological rather than thematic survey of the poetry - a procedure that involves a consideration of how each book attains its distinctive character while having common preoccupations and stylistic traits. Secondly, he examines the tension implicit in Espriu's poetry between involvement and detachment or between the civic and the lyric.

"At last, a translation that does long overdue justice to the noble poetry of Salvador Espriu, one of this century's great lyric elegists." --William Arrowsmith

One of the defining texts of twentieth-century Catalan fiction, written by one of its most innovative and cherished writers, Salvador Espriu's Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth is a collection of thirty-four short stories in which the twists and turns of action, character, and place are as winding and sumptuous as the legendary maze of its title. Originally published in 1935 in the midst of great countrywide political and social upheaval, these stories are a mirror, a grotesque mirror, held up to Catalan and Spanish society. Infused with a deep sense of mythic power, blending social realism with lush modernist experiment, Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth is a triumph of style. Perhaps best known for his poetry, Espriu's rich lyricism and highly evocative use of the Catalan language are here brought to life in the poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips's remarkable English language translation of a classic of world literature.

La pell de brau has been called the most important book to appear in Spain in the 1960s. Grappling with themes of national, racial, and cultural identity, its frankness exhilarated and inspired the younger generation of artists to speak out on social and political issues. The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature said of Burton Raffel's translation: "He has created an Espriu equally valid in English, a monument to a Catalan writer of world stature."

Using Franco's Spain and la España sagrada as a counterpoint to European secularity's own development, By the Grace of God is the first sustained analysis within Spanish cultural studies of the sacred as a political category and a tool for political organization.

Provides, in a single alphabetical sequence, a one-volume reference manual of information likely to be of value to readers of literature in the Spanish language.