Conversation with Mercè Ibarz

More than twenty-five years ago, Mercè Ibarz published La terra retirada, a personal chronicle of the transformations undergone by the contemporary rural world in which she evokes social, economic, and landscape changes in her hometown Saidí. Two years later, she published La palmera de blat and both books soon became works of reference in Catalan literature. In 2020, she has returned to the project with the publication of Labor inacabada, another first-person chronicle including fragments of a photographic essay in which the journey between Barcelona and Saidí still takes centre stage. Now, the three works have given shape to El tríptic de la terra, a tableau where, with great expressive freedom, Ibarz explores the boundaries between literary genres, landscapes, and generations.