Berta Giraut recommends a short novel "hard, but very sincere and very authentic"

BarcelonaActress Berta Giraut is one of the most multifaceted and restless figures on the Catalan scene, and one of the most literary. In addition to dedicating herself to acting, in 2020 she published the poetry collection "Com l'estel que no hi és" (El Gall Editor), and she has also directed, is the author of several theatrical texts, and works as a teacher of diction and oral expression. Her latest show as an actress is "L’última entrevista (Roig/Capmany)", in which she has stepped into the shoes of Montserrat Roig in an interview with Maria Aurèlia Capmany, who is played by Anna Güell. It was one of the successes of the past Grec festival and is scheduled to return in May 2027. "In all these works there is a lot of love for poetry, and lately I have investigated a lot about the dialogue between poetry and theater," explains Giraut. The book she recommends is a novel "very hard but very sincere and very authentic": "Génie la boja", by Inès Cagnati (Quid Pro Quo Edicions). "It is a very brief novel, it seems like a poem. It reaches your heart directly, and we lack things that truly touch our soul," says Giraut.

Génie la boja is the story of the unconditional love of little Marie for her mother, known as Génie la boja. Rejected by her family for giving birth to a bastard, Génie is forced to work to exhaustion in farms and estates in the deep French countryside. "Although it has a lot of poetic force, it is very readable, because it is structured in very short chapters – she explains –. It has a wonderful mix of tenderness and harshness, and it is very inspiring for anyone who wants to write or create. Cagnati's literary quality is very high, and she does not fall into sentimentalism at any time." Giraut also highlights the translation by Marta Marfany: "It is splendid, in very beautiful Catalan. You understand it perfectly and, at the same time, you learn words".