''Life Embitters'' () is a 1967 book by the Spanish writer

Josep Pla Josep Pla i Casadevall (; 8 March 1897 – 23 April 1981) was a Spanish journalist and a popular author. As a journalist he worked in France, Italy, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, from where he wrote political and cultural chronicles i ...

. The content is a mix of anecdotes, travelogue, historical essays, journalism and memoir, with stories set in various parts of Europe which Pla visited. An English translation by Peter Bush was published by

Archipelago Books Archipelago Books is an American not-for-profit publisher dedicated to promoting "cross-cultural exchange through international literature in translation." Located in Brooklyn, New York, it publishes small to mid-size runs of international fictio ...

in 2015.

Reception

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...

'' wrote in 2015: "Moving around the capitals of Europe in a time of depression and unremitting melancholy, Pla often serves up small moments of perhaps unintentional brilliance ... About all that's missing from this sprawling narrative of vignettes and sharp ''aperçus'' is a sense of the author, who sometimes remains hidden; a circumstantial introduction, especially addressing Pla's politics in that most political of times, would have been very useful. Students of Orwell's journalism and of Kapuscinski will be glad to discover Pla, whose melancholy resembles that of his contemporary

Stefan Zweig Stefan Zweig ( ; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in V ...

—and for some of the same reasons." The same year, Michael Euade of ''Catalonia Today'' wrote that "Pla's portraits are sharp, but not cruel: in part, because he does not except himself." Euade continued: "In his piece on Italian painting, Pla urges his readers to throw away the 'pamphlets that only distort your vision – however handy or abstruse they might be… Set out to see things firsthand, be curious: that's the way to travel.' This is what he did. Combining general comment and the immediacy of close observation, he helps us see the world afresh."

References

{{Reflist

External links

Publicity page
at

' website 1967 non-fiction books Catalan-language literature Books by Josep Pla