I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Solà in New York

Irene Solà, a leading voice in contemporary Catalan literature, presents her new novel that spans centuries, voices, and landscapes, and will discuss its themes, narrative structure, and translation challenges.

Catalan writer and artist Irene Solà, author of the widely praised When I Sing, Mountains Dance, introduces her new novel, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness. In this work, Solà continues her exploration of memory, landscape, and identity, combining elements of folklore, contemporary storytelling, and art.

Solà will engage in a conversation about the novel’s themes, its narrative structure, and the process of writing in Catalan. The discussion will also touch on the challenges and insights of translating her work, as well as the cultural contexts that shape her storytelling.

The conversation will be moderated by a soon-to-be-announced writer and critic, who will bring their perspective to the discussion. This event provides an opportunity to delve deeper into Solà’s creative process and the literary influences that inform her distinctive voice.

Irene Solà is unlike any other writer—she storms her own path, setting fire to all our preconceived notions of what a novel can do while she goes. I adored this book.

—Daisy Johnson

In the spirit of Ágota Kristóf and Juan Rulfo, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness is forged from the deepest and truest stories about the perversity of the body, the sheer drama of the natural world, and the vengeful side of the divine. A fecund and daring book.

—Catherine Lacey

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

Dawn is breaking over the Guilleries, a rugged mountain range in Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, and demons. In a remote farmhouse called Mas Clavell, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed. Family and caretakers drift in and out. Meanwhile, all the women who have lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of stories unspool, and the house reverberates with raucous laughter, pungent feasts, and piercing cries of pleasure and pain.

It all begins with Joana, Mas Clavell’s matriarch, who once longed for a husband—“a full man,” perhaps even “an heir with a patch of land and a roof over his head.” She summoned the devil to fulfill her wish and struck a deal: a man in exchange for her soul. But when, on her wedding day, Joana discovered that her husband was missing a toe (eaten by wolves), she exploited a loophole in her agreement, heedless of what consequences might follow.

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness blurs the lines between the dead and the living, past and present, story and history. In it, Irene Solà draws on oral tradition as well as art, literature, and fairy tales to tell a new kind of story.

Irene Solà

Irene Solà is a renowned Catalan writer known for her innovative blend of literature, art, and film. Her debut poetry collection Bèstia won the Amadeu Oller Prize, and her first novel Els dics received the Documenta Prize, marking her as a boundary-pushing literary voice.

Her second novel, Canto jo i la muntanya balla (When I Sing, Mountains Dance), brought her international acclaim, earning the European Union Prize for Literature in 2020 and being translated into 24 languages. Solà’s visual art has also been exhibited in prominent venues, including Barcelona and London’s Whitechapel Gallery.