The Time of the Doves

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

The Time of the Doves

The book is named after a square 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". Arguably the author's most accomplished work, the novel has been translated into more than thirty languages 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.

Set in Barcelona during the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War, the novel pictures a young woman, Natalia, and her struggles in life 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, in a balanced mixture of psychologism and naturalism.