Set between Barcelona and the heart of deep Catalonia, this is an intimate, reflective novel in alternating voices, exploring how absence, guilt, and memory shape identity. With restrained prose, it shows how forgetting can wound and redeem, and how writing becomes an act of reconciliation.
Marcel and Nora meet as teenagers at a moment when friendship and love can be one and the same. Just as their bond begins to take shape, Nora’s family has to move away and life separates them. Years later, their voices return—fragmented, reflective, and searching—as each tries to put a name to what they never understood, and reconstruct what they lost.
Moving between Mas d’en Roig and Barcelona, the narrative traces the journey from youthful innocence to adult clarity. As memories resurface, long-buried family secrets emerge, forcing the characters to confront not only their shared past but the emotional scars that have silently defined their lives.
At its heart, The Oblivion of Butterflies is a meditation on the many forms of love—and its absence—, on culpability and emotional repair, and on the process of becoming oneself.
The title serves as a metaphor: like butterflies that must forget the weight of their former selves in order to fly, Marcel and Nora must learn what to release in order to move forward.