Resumen de Gender, language and nation: female and androgynous selves in Montserrat Roig's last novels

Maria Àngels Francés Díez

• The narrative fiction of Montserrat Roig, one of the most popular contemporary Catalan writers, is based on gender, nation and language coordinates for the construction of her female characters' selves. In their quest for self-acceptance and fulfilment, the women of Roig's novels often look back to origins and the maternal legacy as a source for self-creation and identification. Catalan, consciously chosen as a literary language, is not only Roig's mother tongue but a nationality, and it also represents her city, Barcelona. Catalan language and literature, located in this precise geographical place, create the symbolic sphere where her characters root themselves.