For many current Catalan writers, shit is everything. I mean they call it that - generically, shit–, of the different kinds of shit there are in the world, as if it were all the same, either because they have no roots in the countryside (only shadows on the asphalt) or because they have not read enough (or at all) of their own literary tradition. Ramon Erra (Vic, 1966) is a rigorous writer, who has read well (and enough) and who has deep roots in the land. He knows that chicken manure is called hen, and for horse manure, there is only one name: we make. May the guano is the excrementitious matter of bats. It is not bullshit, what I say! Language is the raw material of the writer. Erra also knows what a piss-a-bed is, a wild cock (and he has even seen some!) and a drain – which he writes load, as it should be pronounced in their native region–, and knows how to distinguish between a wheat field and stubble.