The Time of the Doves

The Time Of The Doves

"The Time Of The Doves" (known as "The Pigeon Girl" too) is a novel from the Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda (original novel's title: "La Plaça Del Diamant" (The Diamond Square)).It is considered by critics to be the author's masterpiece, it has already become a classic from the postwar literature in Spain (F.Franco's dictatorship period: 1936-1975).The novel, published from the first time in 1962, has been translated into more than twenty languages, for example into Japanese ("Daiamondo Hiroba"), into Italian ("La Piazza Del Diamante"), into French ("La Place Du Diamant") or into Chinese ("Zuanshi Guangchang").

Plot

The novel, with the background of the Republic and the Spanish Civil War, tells Natalia's story, an ordinary girl that accepts, without any complaint, all that her husband and life impose to her. Even she accepts the change of her name, "Natalia" ("Natalie" in Catalan) to "Colometa" ("little pigeon" in Catalan).This resignation finishes as the war is ending. Natalia reveals against all that she considers unfair. At the novel's ending she'll become into "Ms. Natalia" instead of "Colometa". A name's change that means a personality's change too. The novel is a faithful chronicle from Barcelona in the postwar period too and how it marked this historical period to the inhabitants.