Winds of the Night
Winds of the Night (Catalan: El vent de la nit) is a novel by the Catalan author and publisher, Joan Sales. It is set in a devastated and impoverished Catalonia under the heel of the Franco dictatorship after the Spanish Civil War. Its narrator is a Catholic priest who undergoes a major crisis of faith. History of the novel Winds of the Night was originally the fourth part of Joan Sales’ masterwork, Incerta Glòria (Uncertain Glory). The novel was published in 1956 after having been initially rejected by the Francoist censor because it “expressed heretical ideas often in disgusting and obscene language”. Through different editions, Sales continued rewriting and adding to the text, always seeking to escape from the constraints of censorship. In 1971, the greatly expanded definitive version was published, in which the fourth part was entitled Últimes notícies (Latest News). In the 1981 edition of Incerta Glòria, Últimes notícies had become El vent de la nit, novel.la (Winds of the Night, a novel). Finally, in 2012, on the centenary of Sales’ birth, it was published as a separate and self-contained book by his granddaughter, Maria Bohigas. Maria Bohigas later argued that Sales had recognised that the two novels