In 1932 Josep Maria de Sagarra set out to write the great Catalonian novel, an urban antidote to the rural tales and timid missives about folk customs that had previously prevailed in the Catalonian literature. Private Life was the result: a scathing critique of the decadent and disappearing aristocratic classes hailing from the region. Sagarra's evisceration of the upper classes was both ruthless and thorough - the impact of their behaviour on everyone from their own kin to the street sweepers they brush past painstakingly chronicled in this volume.
