Can we live with our dead present without them tormenting us, especially considering that some as significant as the older sister or father have committed suicide? This is one of the driving questions of A Truce That Is Not Peace, the new book by Miriam Toews (Steinbach, 1964), published in Catalan by Les Hores, translated by Octavi Gil Pujol. In the hands of many writers, the autobiographical material she unfolds would be mired in the swamp of traumas. The Canadian author, however, knows how to combine sadness and longing with a surprising sense of humor. She can just as easily rescue an anecdote from the Mennonite Christian community where she grew up as recall a funny family episode from the past – such as the robbery in Ecuador –, mention a book that has recently interested her, and draw the reader into her current reality: the author has had a small house built on the property where her mother, one of her daughters, her partner, and their two children live.

If Ana and André hadn't wanted children and she hadn't gotten pregnant, if they hadn't moved to a new apartment and hadn't had Madalena and Miguel as neighbors, Mariana Salomão Carrara (São Paulo, 1986) wouldn't have found a novelist who could read the shocking novel in a novelist. The keen eye of the publishing house Les Hores and the skill of the book's translator, Pere Comellas, have made it possible for readers to discover If it weren't for the syllables of Saturday, a story that begins with the cracked head of André, Ana's husband, in the entrance to the apartment building where they lived. The man was the collateral victim of a neighbor's suicide: as André left the apartment, Miguel fell on him.

The peculiar and subtle work of Rachel Cusk (Saskatoon, 1967) has been gaining readers in Catalonia thanks to the commendable commitment of the publishing house Les Hores, which has published four books in five years. In addition to two of its most compelling titles –A life's work (2001), a revealing and controversial look at motherhood, and Sequel (2012), a chronicle of the shipwreck of his marriage, has revealed the latest novels he has written, The other house (2021) and Parade (2024). "I haven't invented anything in my writing for a while now," says Cusk. "Life is a writer's primary material. The purest literature often comes from personal and intimate experiences."