A Woman Walking By

In Spain, the diary has long been an overwhelmingly male genre. But what happens when a woman is the one reflecting on the texture of her everyday life? Reflection, when pursued in freedom, can be every bit as gripping as a novel, and with this book Marta Marín-Dòmine proves it.

A Woman Walking By is a year in the life of a woman in Barcelona, from September 2023 to September 2024: two summers shaped by climate change; her dismissal as director of El Born; the forging of a friendship; and the suspicion of a serious illness. Alongside these personal events come the news of the massacre perpetrated by Hamas in the kibbutzim, the systematic bombardment of Gaza, and the cascade of allegations exposing misogynistic abuse by prominent figures in the worlds of art and culture.

In the face of a hostile world marked by the return of strongman politics and essentialist rhetoric, Marín-Dòmine argues for a cosmopolitan civic ethos and an embrace of vulnerability. Feminism—as it has evolved from the 1970s to the present day—is the lens through which she sees the world. Running through the book is a central question: what does it mean to feel at home, and how can human beings find a sense of home in our time?