Title: Beloved
Author: Empar Mioliner
Translation from Catalan: Laura McGloughlin
Original title: Benvolguda
Publishing date: 29th August 2024
Pages: 200  | ISBN 978-1-7391287-5-3
Price: £14.99

A masterpiece on how to survive a heartbreak.

Remei is a renowned illustrator in her fifties who considers herself an attractive, happily married mother. But one evening, sitting in the back seat of the family car, she clearly predicts that her younger husband, a leading violinist in an orchestra, will fall in love with the second violinist. This devastating revelation leads Remei, a determined woman who has struggled to survive since childhood, to a harsh realisation of what it means to grow old inside.

We go from laughter to a sharpness that exposes the pathetic side of life, to the point where we feel like stone statues in front of a story that unfolds with coldness and determination when it comes to recreating the anguish generated by the few alternatives the protagonist has left.

Empar Moliner displays her literary talent in a moving and unforgettable story about friendship, the passage of time, forgiveness and the secret rawness - never spoken of and always played down - of menopause.

Beloved is a book that explores the lightness in which the sweetest life suddenly turns upside down, a story through whose veins are running heartbreak, maturity and the loss of sexual fury.

Empar Moliner (Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana, Barcelona, 1966) is a Catalan writer and journalist. Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, English and Polish. In 2015 she won the Mercè Rodoreda Prize for Tot això ho faig perquè tinc molta por. More recently, in 2022, she won the Ramon Llull Prize for the novel Benvolguda, translated into English as Beloved.

Translated from Catalan into English by Laura McGloughlin.

'Falling oestrogen, combined together with lactose intolerance and the loss of near vision, makes me see the world through the light wings of a dragonfly. Because of this I can see, with utter clarity, that my man is going to fall in love with this other woman.'