Catalonia promotes the work of the writer Ramon Llull at the Frankfurt Book Fair

The Institut Ramon Llull will promote the work of the great Catalan writer Ramon Llull at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, which opened yesterday.

The stand devoted to Catalan culture bears the slogan ‘Catalonia, land of books, Barcelona, publishing capital’.

Alex Susanna, director of the Institut Ramon Llull, the institution responsible for promoting Catalan culture abroad, said that this year every effort will be made to promote the figure of Llull: ‘Our intention is to secure the maximum number of new translations and reissues. Llull is one of the most-translated authors in Catalan literature, but we need for his books to find their way to bookstores everywhere. And in this regard, our focus will be on ‘Llibre d’amic e amat’ (Book of the Lover and the Beloved) as an introduction to the thinker’.

As part of the celebration in Catalonia of the ‘Llull Year,’ a booklet prepared by Enric Soler has been published in English, with quotes from leading Llull scholars and a list of his translated works.

Catalan literature

At Frankfurt, the Institut Ramon Llull promotes Catalan literature to foreign book publishers, whom it offers information about its lines of support for translation and promotion, the purpose of which is to facilitate the publication in other languages of the works of literature and philosophy written in Catalan. The Institut Ramon Llull has for more than 10 years been working on the creation of a network of contacts with the international publishing sector (publishers, translators, literary agents, cultural institutions, fairs, festivals) with the aim of promoting internationally the work of authors who write in Catalan.

Over the last five years, the translation of Catalan literature into other languages has enjoyed a boom and the IRL works to keep up the pace of this international projection. In this respect, the translations into German of Uncertain Glory, by Joan Sales (Hanser), and The Garden of the Seven Twilights (Zulma), by Miquel de Palol, into French, have been published recently. This Autumn will also see the publication of several English translations too: Private Life, by Josep M. de Sagarra (Archipelago); War, So Much War, by Mercè Rodoreda (Open Letter), and The Boys, by Toni Sala (Two Lines Press).