Virago Modern Classics

''A small masterpiece'' COLM TÓIBÍN, DAILY TELEGRAPH ''The most beautiful novel published in Spain since the Civil War'' GABRIEL GARCÍA MARQUEZ ''Rodoreda''s writing pays such fierce and tender attention to the experience of being alive, and the tempest that ordinary life can be'' HELEN OYEYEMI When we were all alone, and everyone was in bed and the streets empty, he said, you and I will dance a dawn waltz in Diamond Square . . . At a fiesta in early 1930s Barcelona, a young woman finds herself dancing with a stranger. Before long, they are married and living in small apartment on Diamond Square, where Natalia struggles to keep the family afloat while Joe - a charmer and dreamer - imagines that the rare pigeons he breeds on the roof will one day make their fortune. But the joys and squabbles of everyday life are shattered by the eruption of civil war. While Joe leaves Barcelona to fight the fascists, Natalia and her two children