How does someone experience things from the viewpoint of the other sex? It is this question that has led to Guillem Vildot’s creation of Ruth, the genre-defining story of a sex change told by the protagonist through a series of letters to an anonymous friend. Demonstrating the sentimental and intellectual intimacy of a man transitioning into a woman, Ruth describes a profound, touching process in which frustrations, ideas of liberty, and changes of identity are interwoven.

Without descending into easy morbidity or sensationalism, Viladot expresses his indignation at the limitations of both masculine and feminine sensibilities, while championing diversity of thought, love, liberty, and, most importantly, desire.

Poet, novelist, essayist, and artist, GUILLEM VILADOT is one of Catalonia’s most prolific and varied writers. A proponent of visual poetry, he founded Lo Pardal in his native Agramunt in the 1990s.

P. LOUISE JOHNSON has taught Catalan literature at the University of Sheffield since 1996 and has published widely on Viladot. She is translator of Andrea Víctrix.