LUVOWSKI AND THE FEIXES BOOKS
A key time and date in the evolution of Jaume Cabré's narrative work is 1983, the year in which when he was the winner of the two most prestigious awards in Catalan narrative. He won the Prudenci Bertrana prize with Fra Junoy o l'agonia dels sons (1) and the Premi Sant Jordi with La teranyina (2), both of which were published in February 1984. The interest aroused by both books, and their quality, was a sign that his work deserved to be studied closely. This kind of situation, two novels and two prizes in the same year, is an uncommon event, and I cannot remember it ever happening, either before or since. On reading both books, however, clues began to emerge as to how this had happened. These two novels, despite their clearly different plots, set up crossover spaces that connected them using the same physical places and recurring characters. We were beginning to discover and get to know a mythical space in the author's mind that has given rise to a highly successful set of contemporary Catalan literary works, the Feixes books.
This made it easier to understand how the two novels coincided in time, as both belong to the same creative moment and the same literary project. Later, knowing the working process followed by Jaume Cabré when he constructs his novels, this coincidence in time would make itself even more obvious. But the key to this narrative process became evident a year later with the publication of a new book, a volume of stories entitled Llibre de preludis (3) containing the third story in the cycle, Luvowski o la desraó, and a brief author's note at the end of the book ('Postludi'), in which Cabré gives some news and clarifies the link of a "common backdrop" in and around the town of Feixes, together with the starting date for the project: 1977.
Extract from the preface to Llibre de preludis, ‘Biblioteca Jaume Cabré’ edition. Proa B. 2002