BOOK LAUNCH “Samkalin Catalan Kahaniyan” by Aparajit Chattopadhyay, Suresh Dhingra & Sameer Rawal at Instituto Cervantes, 48, Hanuman Road, Connaught Place (CP) > 6:30pm on 15th March 2017

Time : 6:30 pm Add to Calendar 15/03/2017 18:30 15/03/2017 00:00 Asia/Kolkata BOOK LAUNCH “Samkalin Catalan Kahaniyan” by Aparajit Chattopadhyay, Suresh Dhingra & Sameer Rawal Event Page : http://www.delhievents.com/2017/03/book-launch-samkalin-catalan-kahaniyan.html Instituto Cervantes, 48, Hanuman Road, Connaught Place (CP), New Delhi - 110001 DD/MM/YYYY


Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served Basis)

Venue : Instituto Cervantes, 48, Hanuman Road, Connaught Place (CP), New Delhi - 110001
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Metro : Nearest Metro Station - 'Rajiv Chowk' (Yellow Line and Blue Line)
Area : Connaught Place (CP)

Event Description : BOOK LAUNCH “Samkalin Catalan Kahaniyan” by Aparajit Chattopadhyay, Suresh Dhingra and Sameer Rawal

As part of 'Literature and Thinking' Series. 

Synopsis: Samkalin Catalan Kahaniyan is a collection of Catalan short stories translated into Hindi by Aparajit Chattopadhyay and Suresh Dhingra . Selection and prologue by eminent Indian Catalanist Aparajit Chattopadhyay. It contains writings by major Catalan writers including Pere Calders, Baltasar Porcel, Carme Riera, Montserrat Roig and Quim Monzó and Pere Gimferrer. Most of the stories are based in Barcelona narrating the lives of a urban population passing through different phases. Noucentisme characteristics depicting travails of city life are visible in these stories. 

About the writers: 

Pere Calders i Rossinyol (Barcelona, 29 September 1912 - 21 July 1994) was a Catalan writer and cartoonist. He became known at the beginning of the 1930s for his drawings, articles and stories which were published in newspapers and magazines. At twenty-four, he published his first books: the collection of stories El primer arlequí (The first harlequin), and the brief novel La glòria del doctor Larén (Doctor Laren's glory). Exiled in Mexico for twenty-three years, along with his brother-in-law (the writer Avel·lí Artís Gener "Tísner"), he composed his most critically well-received works, in particular the short stories Cròniques de la veritat oculta (Chronicles of the hidden truth, 1955) and Gent de l'alta vall (People of the high valley, 1957), and the novel Ronda naval sota la boira (Raval round under the fog, 1966). He returned to Catalonia in 1962. Alongside publishing work and journalistic collaborations, he wrote L'ombra de l'atzavara (The shadow of the agave, 1964), with which he won the Premi Sant Jordi de novel·la. With the arrival of democracy, he became popular as a result of the success of the theatrical assembly Antaviana, created by the company Dagoll Dagom, based on some of Pere's short stories. Since then, most of his books have been republished. He received the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes (1986), and shortly before his death was awarded the National Prize from Journalism (1993). 

Baltasar Porcel i Pujol (Andratx, Majorca, March 14, 1937 – Barcelona, July 1, 2009) was a Spanish writer, journalist and literary critic. His enormous legacy credited him as one of the greatest authors in Catalan literature from the 20th century. He was born on 14 March 1937 in Andratx, Majorca. His catalan language works has been translated into Spanish, German, English, French, Italian and Vietnamese among others. He also won several literary prizes. As a journalist he worked in La Vanguardia, Última Hora and Catalunya Ràdio. Since 1960 he lived in both Barcelona and Majorca. He was the president of the Catalan Institute for the Mediterranean since 1989 to 2000. In 2002 we won the National prize of Literature of Catalonia and in 2007 the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. He also received in Italy the Bocaccio Prize, in France the Prix Méditerranée and in the United States the Critic's Choice. He was married with the Valencian writer Concha Alós, Spanish translator of some of his works. Porcel died on 1 July 2009 at the age of 72 after several years battling cancer. 

Carme Riera i Guilera (born 12 January 1948) is a novelist and essayist. She has also written short stories, scripts for radio and television and literary criticism. She holds a doctorate in Hispanic Philology and is a professor of Spanish literature at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Riera was born in Palma. She attended the Sacred Heart primary school and the Joan Alcover Institute in Palma, where she met Majorcan writers and fell in love with a teacher, Francisco Llinás. In 1968 she moved to Barcelona to study Hispanic Philology in the Department of Philosophy and Letters of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She graduated in 1973 and the following year married Francisco Llinás and was hired by Manuel Blecua to give classes in the Department. That year her son Ferran was born, and she began her literary career. She writes in Catalan and Spanish. Her self-translations are often published at the same time. She currently lives in Barcelona. Her best-known work is the historical novel "Dins el darrer blau" (1994), winner of several prizes (see below) and the first novel in Catalan to win the Premio Nacional de Narrativa (National Prize for Narrative), awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. An English translation by Kathleen McNerney, "Blue Horizons of no Return: Sephardic Journeys", is awaiting publication. Riera was elected to Seat n of the Real Academia Española on 19 April 2012, she took up her seat on 7 November 2013. 

Montserrat Roig i Fransitorra (Barcelona, June 13, 1946 – November 10, 1991) was a Spanish writer of novels, short stories and articles. Roig was born in 1946 into a liberal middle-class family in Barcelona's Eixample neighborhood, the sixth of seven children of lawyer and writer Tomàs Roig i Llop and Albina Fransitorra.[4] She was born and lived most of her life on Bailén Street. From 1961 to 1964, she studied at the Escola d'Art Dramàtic Adrià Gual (Adrià Gual School of Dramatic Arts), appearing as an actress in multiple productions. She earned a degree in philosophy and letters from the University of Barcelona in 1968 and a doctorate in 1970. In 1970, Roig won the Víctor Català prize for Molta roba i poc sabó... i tan neta que la volen, a compilation of short stories, and began to dedicate herself to writing literature. She began a literary cycle composed of works such as Ramona adéu (1972), which portrays three generations of women – grandmother, mother and daughter – who live their own stories with key moments in Catalan history as a background, or El temps de les cireres (1977), starring the same characters, for which Roig received the "Premi Sant Jordi de novel·la" in 1976. L'hora violeta (1980) is the novel which culminates her feminist positioning. From then on, her novels took a different turn. Later, she published L'òpera quotidiana (1982), La veu melodiosa (1987) and a compilation of short stories with the title El cant de la joventut (1989). The last of her publications was Digues que m'estimes encara que sigui mentida (1991), where she conveys personal poetry as a literary will. She worked as a lecturer in Catalan and Spanish at the University of Bristol, was visiting professor of Catalan history and creative writing at the Department of Hispanic and Latin  American Studies of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and also taught twentieth-century Spanish literature and creative writing at the University of Arizona. She was active in the feminist movement and published three books about women and feminism ¿Tiempo de mujer? (1980), El feminismo (1981) and Mujeres hacia un nuevo humanismo (1981). Her work as a journalist is also remarkable, showing her will to build a tradition of cultured, feminist journalism and recover the historical memory of her country. She gained popularity as an interviewer, both in print and on television, first contributing to the magazine Serra d'Or with interviews later published in 1975 and 1976 as a series of books titled Retrats paral·lels ("Parallel portraits") In 1977 she began working for the Catalan division of Televisión Española, where she produced an program of interviews called "Personatges", later collected in two books of the same title. Roig's 1977 nonfiction book Els catalans als camps nazis ("Catalans in the Nazi Camps"), which included testimony from Catalans who survived deportation to Nazi concentration camps, was honored with the Serra d'Or critics' prize. Her book L'agulla daurada ("The Golden Spire"), inspired by a two-month stay in Leningrad, dealt with the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War and earned her the National Prize of Catalan Literature (essay) in 1986. From 1984 to 1989 she was a daily columnist for El Periódico, and from September 1990 until her death she contributed regularly to the Catalanlanguage newspaper Avui. Her columns for Avui were published in the posthumous collection Un pensament de sal, un pessic de pebre (1992). An aggressive form of breast cancer was the cause of her death at the age of 45. 

Joaquim Monzó i Gómez, also known as Quim Monzó (born 24 March 1952 in Barcelona, Spain), is a contemporary Spanish writer of novels, short stories and discursive prose, mostly in Catalan. In the early 1970s, Monzó reported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Northern Ireland and East Africa for the Barcelona newspaper Tele/eXpres. He lives in Barcelona and publishes regularly in La Vanguardia. His fiction is characterized by an awareness of pop culture and irony. His other prose maintains this humor. One collection of his essays, Catorze ciutats comptant-hi Brooklyn, is notable for its account of New York City in the days immediately following September 11. In collaboration with Cuca Canals, he wrote the dialogue for Bigas Luna's Jamón, jamón. He has also written El tango de Don Joan, with Jérôme Savary. In 2007 he wrote and read the opening speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the year in which Catalan culture was the guest. Monzó designed an acclaimed lecture written as if it were a short story, thus differing completely from a traditional speech. From December 2009 to April 2010 there took place in the Arts Santa Mònica Gallery in Barcelona a great retrospective exhibition on his life and his work, called Monzó. 

Pere Gimferrer (born in 1945 in Barcelona) is an award-winning Spanish poet, translator and novelist. He is twice winner of Spain's Premio Nacional de Poesía (National Poetry Prize). He was born in Barcelona in 1945. He writes both in Castilian and Catalan. In Castilian, he has written the poetry collections Arde el mar (1966, National Prize for Poetry), Amor en vilo (2006), Interludio azul (2006) and Tornado (2008). In Catalan, he has written the novel Fortuny (1983, Ramon Llull Prize and Critica Prize), and the poetry collection El vendaval (1988, National Poetry Prize). For lifetime achievement, he won the Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas (National Prize for Spanish Literature) in 1998 and the International Octavio Paz Prize for Poetry and Criticism in 2006. Gimferrer was elected to Seat O of the Real Academia Española on 18 April 1985, he took up his seat on 15 December the same year.

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