From War, So Much War, by Mercè Rodoreda, published this month by Open Letter. Rodoreda, who died in 1983, was the author of several other novels, including The Time of the Doves. Translated from the Catalan by Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent.

A large sack suspended from a tree was swinging back and forth, and from it emerged the head of a man with a straight, taut rope behind it. His face was white, his tongue black, his lips purple. By the tree, just beneath the hanged man’s feet, was a rock; I climbed on it and cut the…