At the age of 75 and in his native Mallorca, he has passed away Maria Antonia Oliver (Manacor, 1946), one of the most prominent writers of Catalan literature, who was part of the Ofèlia Dracs collective and was recognized in 2016 with the Prize d’Honor of the Catalan Letters.
Oliver published his first novel in 1970 and has since written novels, short stories, plays, articles, translations, and screenplays. His works include those with a Majorcan theme ‘Cròniques de la molt anomenada ciutat de Moncarrà’ (1972) and ‘El vaixell d’iràs i no tornaràs’ (1976), ‘Joana E.’ (Prudenci Bertrana Award 1992) and the play ‘Negroni de ginebra’.
After 30 years in Barcelona, the writer had retired in Mallorca about 25 years ago, beginning a long period of literary silence. She did it after two hard blows: a heart transplant in 1997 for a heart condition and the death, the following year, of her partner for three decades, he also writer Jaime Fuster.
Along with Fuster, and figures such as Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Montserrat Roig, Maria Mercè Marçal and Carme Riera, Oliver was part of the 70’s generation and, together with Joan Rendé, Joaquim Carbó, Jaume Fuster, Joaquim Soler, Josep Albanell, Jaume Cabré, Vicenç Villatoro, Margarida Aritzeta and Isidre Grau, was one of the members of the collective Ophelia Dracs, whose objective was the normalization of Catalan through genres such as erotic, horror, fantasy and science fiction or gastronomy. From there, collective titles such as ‘Deu pometes té el pomer’, ‘Lovecraft, Lovecraf’ and ‘Negra i consentida’ arose. As she herself commented, when receiving the Premi d’Honor, “we did it as a game, but we were aware that it was also something serious”.
He also created Lònia Guiu, the first detective of the Catalan black novel, who would be the protagonist of ‘Estudi en lila’, ‘Antípodes’ and ‘El sol que fa l’ànec’. “I am neither an expert in black novels nor a great reader, but when I invented Lònia Guiu with Ofèlia Dracs I thought that perhaps it would be useful for other things. For what? I thought I always had to talk about corruption, violence against women and against children, and I still think the same,” he told this newspaper in an interview.
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Oliver had been a student in secondary education of Aina Moll and always used Catalan, being sensitive to the oral language and that of the Rondalles Mallorquines. She was also a translator into Catalan of works by writers such as Virginia Woold, Italo Calvino, Mark Twain, RL Stevenson, Anton Chéjov or Herman Melville, whose version of ‘Moby Dick’ would win the 1985 Catalan Literature Prize from the Generalitat. .
After his literary hiatus due to his health problems and the loss of Fuster, the Premi d’Honor would give him the necessary impetus to continue. “I already consider myself retired and I’ve been a long time without writing, but I don’t want to die without writing and this award has encouraged me to try again.” In previous years he had published the short story anthology ‘L’illa i la dona’ in 2003 and ‘Colors de mar’ in 2007.