Salvador Ortells has published Ferran Torrent. Entre els llibres i la vida, a literary portrait of the Valencian narrator released to mark Torrent’s 75th anniversary. The book reconstructs episodes from the writer’s life and career while also portraying the social and political environment in which he grew up and worked.
Ortells says that researching Torrent’s life also helped him reconstruct the history of the country, including periods of adversity. Torrent, however, describes his own background as middle-class and agricultural, without luxury but also without the hardships experienced by some childhood acquaintances who began working in furniture companies at the age of ten.
The book is based on several conversations between Ortells and Torrent, first in the author’s hometown of Sedaví and later in Valencia. They review Torrent’s early jobs, including work in the fields with his father, commercial sales, selling stickers and weighing meat, before his move into journalism and fiction writing.
Ortells says Torrent gave him complete freedom and also collaborated on the project. The author acknowledges that he took the liberty of fictionalising some of the dialogues.
Torrent also recalls that the period from 2020 to 2024 was among the most difficult of his life, marked by the pandemic, prostate cancer and flooding that destroyed part of his home. He says that writing allowed him to disconnect from those experiences: when he starts writing, he explains, the real world ceases to exist.
The anniversary tribute began at the Gabriel García Márquez library and continues at the Filmoteca with a screening of Gràcies per la propina, the 1997 adaptation by Francesc Bellmunt of Torrent’s novel of the same name.
Sources: La Vanguardia.