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Chrysalis. Pastoral in B Minor
A plague of Asian wasps endangers the production of honey in a neighbourhood in the middle of the Dordogne. On a sweltering summer day, someone arrives to make an environmental report and finds a fragile microclimate on the verge of collapse.
An elderly couple, Emma and Olivier, welcome some young citizens whom no one knows into their home and who, according to the village bar, are desperate. As witness, the villagers have an ancient mirror, a chrysalis clinging to a hinge and the old translator who, losing his memory and faculties, observes them all from the library.
A halo of tragedy hovers over the district: the visit of a foreign woman, the intrigues of her son to build a housing estate there, the disappearance of a dog, the life calendar of the florist, guided by the garrison of bouquets and the first wreath. Susanna Rafart unfolds a fable with a ternary rhythm of unusual beauty. A gem in which readers catch glimpses of everything that is hinted at and are moved by what is kept silent.
An elderly couple, Emma and Olivier, welcome some young citizens whom no one knows into their home and who, according to the village bar, are desperate. As witness, the villagers have an ancient mirror, a chrysalis clinging to a hinge and the old translator who, losing his memory and faculties, observes them all from the library.
A halo of tragedy hovers over the district: the visit of a foreign woman, the intrigues of her son to build a housing estate there, the disappearance of a dog, the life calendar of the florist, guided by the garrison of bouquets and the first wreath. Susanna Rafart unfolds a fable with a ternary rhythm of unusual beauty. A gem in which readers catch glimpses of everything that is hinted at and are moved by what is kept silent.
- GenresFiction
200 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2015
23 people want to read
About the author
Susanna Rafart Corominas
27 booksSusanna Rafart i Corominas (Ripoll, 1962) és poeta i autora de prosa de ficció i d'assaig. Es llicencia en Filologia Hispànica (1985) i Filologia Catalana (1992) per la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona i després treballa com a professora agregada de Llengua i Literatura Espanyoles en escoles de Secundària. Actualment es dedica a la crítica literària en diverses publicacions, tasca que compagina amb l'organització de projectes culturals. Col·labora regularment amb diversos mitjans de comunicació, com ara el diari Avui, la revista Caràcters i diverses cadenes radiofòniques
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May 7, 2025
Longlisted for the 2025 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
The chrysalis abides by the willing suspension of disbelief in its weave: Pastoral in B Minor. It renews its secret capsule, clinging harder to the doorframe. Outside, the buzzing fugue of night subsides, but the chrysalis must consider all threats.
At some point, the warmth melts into its contained stillness.
Chrysalis, Pastoral in B Minor (2024) is translated by Megan Berkobien and María Cristina Hall from the Catalan original Crisàlide, Pastoral en Si Menor (2015) by Susanna Rafart.
It is published by Fum d’Estampa Press, founded in 2020 (see below) and who observe that we have been long- and short-listed for some of the most important literary prizes in the UK and abroad, one of those being the Republic of Consciousness Prize for which the press was longlisted for Summa Kaotica, by Ventura Ametller and translated by Douglas Suttle, and shortlisted for The Song of Youth, by Montserrat Roig and translated by Tiago Miller.
The novel is told in short chapters of 2-3 pages, each told from three different narrative perspectives, announced in the chapter title. E.g. the first is headed:
THE OLD MAN
THE TRACKER
THE FOREST
Other voices are EMMA; THE SON; GUILLAUME; THE LOVERS; THE FLORIST; CÉCILE; CÉCILE'S DOG; THE SMALL AIRCRAFT; THE CHRYSALIS; THE HORNET; and THE NARRATOR
The forest's perspective on the old man from the first chapter, setting the scene:
Crickets fill the forest with their wild orchestration. Daylight bears down on the fields like marble, exhausting the blackbirds still attempting to take flight. Captive to that same delirium, the ashes begin to see-saw, their branches full of dry, bursting laughter. All things seemingly come to a halt while the old man, his focus narrowed, raises his hands together in prayer and leans his arms from side to side, ever so slowly, just to keep his body upright, not a thought in his head. Maybe he's waiting for someone, but now he can't remember. In the despair of his forgetting, the only image to emerge is the chrysalis, clinging to the door of his library - a door he can no longer close because the larva has ensconced itself by the hinge, in the gap between the guest house's two worn-away, white beams. The sun beats down on the book spines, greedily drawing its tongue against the red tiles, forever cool in the repose of summer.
As for whose these different characters are:
The novel is set in a (too) hot summer in the Dordogne, an area increasingly the domain of tourists and second-home owners. Olivier, 'The Old Man', is an elderly and frail, semi-retired translator - he's working on one last translation with an author from Bordeaux (whose poems echo Flor de Mel by the Catalan great Mercè Rodoreda, from which one of the book's epigraphs is taken). Olivier lives with his 2nd wife Emma in a large, but rundown, property, the family home. His brother's son, Guillaume, whose half of the family inheritance Oliver bought out when Guillaume's business ran into trouble, helps with the maintanence, such as roof damage caused by the incroachment of a fig tree. His son from his first marriage Michel, is plotting to trick his Olivier into handing over half of his land, an advance payment on his inheritance, so as to develop it for housing - an all to common form of elderly abuse which is the target of the work done by the wonderful charity Hourglass.
[Emma] cries unwanted tears with a hand to her mouth so as not to wake him. How can she tell him that Michel forced her to forge his signature? That he'd threatened to shut him away in an old folks' home? That the only thing keeping her alive is the runner she's now undoing, the one she doesn't want to finish despite the constant pain in her knees, the agony of setting out the pills at exact times, the silence imposed by that second bouquet of flowers?
The local bee population, including Olivier's now destroyed hives, has been massacred by a plague of Asian hornets, and a man, the 'Tracker' has been sent to trace and eliminate the invaders. At the same time the Tracker is trying to repair his relationship with his wife, Cécile, ruined by his alcoholism, while he temporarily stays with another couple, Pascal and Claudine (the latter lusted after by Guillaume).
And a mysterious pair of young lovers have come to stay with Olivier and Emma, the name of the young woman somewhat unclear as the young man seems to call her Adèle, Cíntia or Maia - who they are, why they are there and what they represent the novel's central, unresolved, mystery.
The local florist follows much of this human intrigue via those who come to her shop and when and why, including her first order for a wreath.
But the in-and-outs of human passions are not the focus of this book, told in heady prose which paints a "poetic sense of existence" - the story watched over by the forest, the hornets, and in parituclar by a chrysalis which hangs in the old couple's house on the door of the separate library in which Olivier works, or used to work:
Nature has recorded neither the hatreds nor the passions that drive their actions, eliciting readers' judgement in turn.
The millet, plovers, hornets, river and chrysalis are multiform agents in their inability to access the symbolic world. Before and after are constant in their error, in their struggle to claim dominion over a time beyond their own.
And as some of the human passions come to a head, the final chapter is told solely from Emma's perspective, and tells of the chrysalis's fate.
Beautiful.
The publisher
Fum d’Estampa Press was founded in 2020 by translator Douglas Suttle to bring exciting, different Catalan language literature to an English speaking audience. Though small, the press quickly established itself as an ambitious publisher of high quality titles. Since then, we have been long- and short-listed for some of the most important literary prizes in the UK and abroad, and have recently started to publish fantastic literature in translation from languages other than Catalan.
The chrysalis abides by the willing suspension of disbelief in its weave: Pastoral in B Minor. It renews its secret capsule, clinging harder to the doorframe. Outside, the buzzing fugue of night subsides, but the chrysalis must consider all threats.
At some point, the warmth melts into its contained stillness.
Chrysalis, Pastoral in B Minor (2024) is translated by Megan Berkobien and María Cristina Hall from the Catalan original Crisàlide, Pastoral en Si Menor (2015) by Susanna Rafart.
It is published by Fum d’Estampa Press, founded in 2020 (see below) and who observe that we have been long- and short-listed for some of the most important literary prizes in the UK and abroad, one of those being the Republic of Consciousness Prize for which the press was longlisted for Summa Kaotica, by Ventura Ametller and translated by Douglas Suttle, and shortlisted for The Song of Youth, by Montserrat Roig and translated by Tiago Miller.
The novel is told in short chapters of 2-3 pages, each told from three different narrative perspectives, announced in the chapter title. E.g. the first is headed:
THE OLD MAN
THE TRACKER
THE FOREST
Other voices are EMMA; THE SON; GUILLAUME; THE LOVERS; THE FLORIST; CÉCILE; CÉCILE'S DOG; THE SMALL AIRCRAFT; THE CHRYSALIS; THE HORNET; and THE NARRATOR
The forest's perspective on the old man from the first chapter, setting the scene:
Crickets fill the forest with their wild orchestration. Daylight bears down on the fields like marble, exhausting the blackbirds still attempting to take flight. Captive to that same delirium, the ashes begin to see-saw, their branches full of dry, bursting laughter. All things seemingly come to a halt while the old man, his focus narrowed, raises his hands together in prayer and leans his arms from side to side, ever so slowly, just to keep his body upright, not a thought in his head. Maybe he's waiting for someone, but now he can't remember. In the despair of his forgetting, the only image to emerge is the chrysalis, clinging to the door of his library - a door he can no longer close because the larva has ensconced itself by the hinge, in the gap between the guest house's two worn-away, white beams. The sun beats down on the book spines, greedily drawing its tongue against the red tiles, forever cool in the repose of summer.
As for whose these different characters are:
The novel is set in a (too) hot summer in the Dordogne, an area increasingly the domain of tourists and second-home owners. Olivier, 'The Old Man', is an elderly and frail, semi-retired translator - he's working on one last translation with an author from Bordeaux (whose poems echo Flor de Mel by the Catalan great Mercè Rodoreda, from which one of the book's epigraphs is taken). Olivier lives with his 2nd wife Emma in a large, but rundown, property, the family home. His brother's son, Guillaume, whose half of the family inheritance Oliver bought out when Guillaume's business ran into trouble, helps with the maintanence, such as roof damage caused by the incroachment of a fig tree. His son from his first marriage Michel, is plotting to trick his Olivier into handing over half of his land, an advance payment on his inheritance, so as to develop it for housing - an all to common form of elderly abuse which is the target of the work done by the wonderful charity Hourglass.
[Emma] cries unwanted tears with a hand to her mouth so as not to wake him. How can she tell him that Michel forced her to forge his signature? That he'd threatened to shut him away in an old folks' home? That the only thing keeping her alive is the runner she's now undoing, the one she doesn't want to finish despite the constant pain in her knees, the agony of setting out the pills at exact times, the silence imposed by that second bouquet of flowers?
The local bee population, including Olivier's now destroyed hives, has been massacred by a plague of Asian hornets, and a man, the 'Tracker' has been sent to trace and eliminate the invaders. At the same time the Tracker is trying to repair his relationship with his wife, Cécile, ruined by his alcoholism, while he temporarily stays with another couple, Pascal and Claudine (the latter lusted after by Guillaume).
And a mysterious pair of young lovers have come to stay with Olivier and Emma, the name of the young woman somewhat unclear as the young man seems to call her Adèle, Cíntia or Maia - who they are, why they are there and what they represent the novel's central, unresolved, mystery.
The local florist follows much of this human intrigue via those who come to her shop and when and why, including her first order for a wreath.
But the in-and-outs of human passions are not the focus of this book, told in heady prose which paints a "poetic sense of existence" - the story watched over by the forest, the hornets, and in parituclar by a chrysalis which hangs in the old couple's house on the door of the separate library in which Olivier works, or used to work:
Nature has recorded neither the hatreds nor the passions that drive their actions, eliciting readers' judgement in turn.
The millet, plovers, hornets, river and chrysalis are multiform agents in their inability to access the symbolic world. Before and after are constant in their error, in their struggle to claim dominion over a time beyond their own.
And as some of the human passions come to a head, the final chapter is told solely from Emma's perspective, and tells of the chrysalis's fate.
Beautiful.
The publisher
Fum d’Estampa Press was founded in 2020 by translator Douglas Suttle to bring exciting, different Catalan language literature to an English speaking audience. Though small, the press quickly established itself as an ambitious publisher of high quality titles. Since then, we have been long- and short-listed for some of the most important literary prizes in the UK and abroad, and have recently started to publish fantastic literature in translation from languages other than Catalan.
July 19, 2025
Sweeping yet slight, a dark yet delicate portrait of ecological collapse, depicted by a range of human and non-human characters in a poetic, almost impressionistic style, with an overarching structure of a "triplet" musical style. Fascinating and oftentimes confusing, luxuriating in its own ambiguity during certain stretches. A rewarding read--but don't let the short length of it fool you, because it's not a quick one.
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