Favourite Reads

March Pick | Selected by Dr Pablo Magana

Josep Pla | The Gray Notebook 

In 1918, a young Josep Pla turns twenty-one. With the so-called Spanish flu running rampant, the University of Barcelona halts classes, and he returns to the family home in northern Catalonia. Over birthday cake, his parents ask him about the future. He doesn’t know. And so he starts writing down his thoughts in a gray notebook.

One of Catalan literature’s gems - and, undoubtedly, my favorite - The Gray Notebook was published in 1966. Pla always insisted he had not touched the text since he first wrote it. A blatant lie, we now know: he did touch it, a lot.

This is a book that brims with life. It is by turns touching, ironic, witty, funny, and melancholic. It also includes some of the most beautiful descriptions of the Empordà region in Catalonia that I have ever read.

It is, above all, a portrait of a man at the crossroads of life. And, while it is not a book of philosophy, we can nevertheless recognize in the young writer a familiar impulse. Perplexed, Pla wonders about the future, life, love, and death - for he is, again, surrounded by disease and death in those years. In spite of that, he managed to write a book of extraordinary beauty, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

March 2026

Past Favourite Reads