Fleeing was the most beautiful thing we had is a book that deals with exile as a I, an extraordinary text on the “dépaysement" (change of scenery) that is inherited from one generation to the next. It’s written by Marta Marín-Dòmine, who was born in Barcelona and now traches Literature and Memory Studies at the Wilfrid Laurier University of Waterloo (Canada).
The book was originally published in Catalan by Club Editor and it reached best sellers lists for some weeks. It was awarded an special mention at the 2019 Catalan Booksellers Award and was awarded the 2019 Barcelona Award. The Spanish translation will be published by Galaxia Gutenberg this October 2020.
In Fleeing was the most beautiful thing we had, the author pays tribute to her father, a boy of the war, one of many who lived the Spanish Civil War when they were teenagers and who, in 1939, went to exile and sought refuge in France, where they were interned in refugee camps. A boy who lived bombings, exile, the return and humiliation of returning to a pro-Franco Barcelona, a city that he does not recognize as his own and makes him feel like an exile in his own country.
The narrator regularly packs her suitcases and goes to a new country where maybe she will end up feeling like home. But no: an instinct pushes her to refuse sedentary life. She seems to flee away. But from what?
Based on texts from his father's unpublished memoir, Marin-Dòmine reflects on the impact of war, exile and repression in thousands and thousands of lives, and she does so with such stinging words that the reader’s heart shakes. We can imagine it, almost feel it. In addition, the author uses the description of photographic images of the time, some of them iconic, which impose themselves with all harsh: Children, teenagers and images of the refugee camp of Argelers (in France).
But the book does not only tell of the memory of the Spanish Civil War, it talks about all the wars, about all the refugees, about all the exiles ... and it tells all this through the eyes of the exiles’ offspring, who somehow have collected the inheritance of those parents who had to leave.
Fleeing was the most beautiful thing we had is a tribute to all the exiles, and a trip from Barcelona to Toronto, looking for traces of nomadic lives. Marta-Marín-Dòmine follows them with the sensitivity of a hunter and focuses on a bewildering truth: that the remembrances of others - what we call memory - are the country where we live.
In dark times like today's, this is a reading to reflect on the importance of the values and the ravages of hatred, repression and lies.
