Jordi Punti

Jordi Punti is a writer, translator, and a regular contributor to the Spanish and Catalan press. Punti is considered one of the most promising new voices of contemporary Catalan literature. In 1998 he published his first book of short stories, Pell d’armadillo (Proa, 1998) that won the Serra d’Or Critics’ Prize.

Lost Luggage is his first novel.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Punti's reply:

As a writer, one of my interests is the destiny of displaced people, or people who live on the edge of two different cultures, countries, languages etc. This is the reason I picked up This Is How You Lose Her, the story collection by Junot Díaz. His way of portraying human relations through the lives of American characters with a Dominican background is always very funny, touching and full of literary grace. He has a special touch for combining the daily troubles of normal people with storytelling that is at the same time poetic and very close to ourselves, like someone we could meet at the supermarket.

I recently reread La plaça del Diamant [In Diamond Square], by Mercè Rodoreda, one of the most important Catalan writers of the 20th Century. Written in a luminous style that enchanted Gabriel García Márquez when living in Barcelona in the 70's, it tells the story of a couple in a lively neighborhood in Barcelona, and how both lives changed when the Spanish Civil War strikes. Focused on the ways of surviving for Natàlia, the main character, her endurance of life grows loveless and full of doubts against a society that is changing with the war and its aftermath. This is an intense novel that inhabits the reader in every page.

Learn more about Lost Luggage at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue