With this translation, the Observatorio once again pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of Carmen Laforet's birth, which we have already commemorated with an event celebrated in January 2021 which traced her career and literary legacy, with special attention to her relationship with the United States. "After a month-long tour that took Carmen Laforet up and down the east coast, to the south, the mid- and far-west of the United States, upon returning to Spain, she wrote Paralelo 35 [Parallel 35] (1967) with her observations about American life and institutions. I have selected to translate three passages from the book here: one about Carmen Laforet’s visit to Harvard University because it is the site of the present publication, and two passages in which she observes racial tensions in the US, where we see that her novelist’s keen eye discerned the most troubling problem in American life, even today. As she preferred to think of herself as a fiction writer, I have also included the translation of one of her best short stories, “La muerta” [The dead woman] from her collection La niña y otros relatos [The girl and other short stories] (1973, 2nd ed.)" --Roberta Johnson, the translator.
