Ramon Monton i Lara (Sabadell, 1959), a translator, storyteller, novelist, poet, and essayist, has a degree in Anglo-German Philology from the University of Barcelona (1987) and has also studied Contemporary History, Critical Thought, publisher marketing, Asian cultures, television fiction, and heritage management. He teaches postgraduate courses in publishing techniques, sustainable development, cultural production and communication, and community cultural development.

His fictional works include the short story collections Inversemblances i fantasies (1993, winner of the Vila de Perpinyà Prize), Els contes del llop (1996, winner of the 1995 Lola Anglada Prize), Històries d’amor i dissolució (1999, winner of the 1998 Sant Just Literary Award for Fictional Prose), El silenci de les sirenes (2001, winner of the 2000 Calldetenes Council Award for Fiction), La revolta dels moribunds (2002), La pàtria dels coribants (2004), L’encanteri (2006, winner of the 2005 Armand Quintana Award for Fiction), L'escriptor més gran del món (2014), L'irresistible encant dels encantats (2014), and La maledicció (2020). With the work Grans èxits. Contes per a diletants (1993-2018) (2018) he brings together a personal selection of stories from twenty-five years of literary creation. He has also published the poetry collections Die Blumen sind blau (2002) and Borrowed Tunes (2020), the novel El nyèbit (2003, winner of the 1999 Enciclopèdia Catalana Foundation Prize and the 2004 Serra d’Or Critics Award) and also the political essays El cansament del resistencialisme (2007) and La revolució pendent (2011).

Ramon Monton has been working as a translator since 1988 and has translated from German to Catalan works by such authors as Elias Canetti, Robert Musil, Michael Ende, H.J.Ch. von Grimmelshausen, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Walser, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Joseph von Eichendorff, Ingo Schulze, Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig, Cornelia Funke, Hans Fallada, Gustav Meyrink and Herta Müller. He has also translated, from English to Catalan, books by Sebastian Junger, Gore Vidal, Ford Madox Ford, Rebecca Miller and Marlon James. In particular, he translated The Museum of Innocence by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, which appeared in Catalan as El museu de la innocència. In 2015, he received the City of Barcelona prize for his translation of Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, which appeared in Catalan as Els quaranta dies del Musa Dagh.

He is a member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC.
Documentation: Ramon Monton.
Photographs: Author’s personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.