Matthew Tree
Author | Banyoles, Catalonia
MATTHEW TREE was born in London at the tail end of 1958.
He taught himself Catalan in 1979. He has lived in Catalonia since 1984.
For literary reasons of his own, in 1990 he stoppe.... more
MATTHEW TREE was born in London at the tail end of 1958.
He taught himself Catalan in 1979. He has lived in Catalonia since 1984.
For literary reasons of his own, in 1990 he stopped writing in English and switched to Catalan, his second language, in which he has so far published eleven books, including two novels, a collection of short stories, an autobiography, two books on Catalonia, a rant against work, and a personal essay on racism. In 2000, he completed a novel (‘Privilegiat’), published in Catalan and Spanish) as well as publishing two non-fiction works in English: 'What's Barcelona?' (2009) and 'Barcelona, Catalonia. A View From The Inside' (2011). He has regular columns in the EL PUNT AVUI newspaper and the magazine Catalonia Today, as well as a self-scripted spot on The Weekly Mag, an English-language infotainment show broadcast on 47 local Catalan TV stations. He published a novel in English, SNUG (2013) which was published in Catalan translation with the title 'De fora vingueren' (2016). In 2019, he published a personal overview of the Catalan Situation based on 40 years of contact with the country; it’s available in Catalan as a print book (‘El conflicte inevitable’. Edicions L’Albí) and in English as an e-book: ‘Catalonia And How It Got That Way’ http://www.anglo-catalan.org/downloads/acsop-monographs/issue17.pdf
In 2021, he published ‘No sóc racista, però…’, a short essay on racism (in Catalan), and ‘If Only’, the definitive English version of the above-mentioned ‘Privilegiat’.
