The Time of the Doves

The Time Of The Doves (also translated as The Pigeon Girl or In Diamond Square;^[1] original Catalan-language: La plaça del Diamant, that is Diamond Square) is a 1962 novel written by exiled Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda.

The book is named after a square [ca; es] in Barcelona's Gràcia district. It is featured in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon as part of a list of canonical books of the "Chaotic Age".^[2] Arguably the author's most accomplished work, the novel has been translated into more than thirty languages^[3] and is regarded as one of the most important pieces of fiction in contemporary Catalan literature. It is also a staple of the curriculum in secondary school programs across Catalonia.^{[citation needed]}

Set in Barcelona during the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War, the novel pictures a young woman, Natalia (nicknamed Colometa, the Pigeon Girl^[4]), and her struggles in life^[5] as well as her relationships with two men: Quimet, her first husband, who dies in the war; and Antoni, her second husband. It is also a chronicle of life in the city at the time,^[5] in a balanced mixture of psychologism and naturalism.^{[citation needed]}