Montserrat Roig (Barcelona, 1946 - 1991). After obtaining her degree in Philosophy and Letters she wrote novels and stories along with journalistic reports and articles while also presenting and directing a number of television programmes, a medium where she excelled as an interviewer, in particular of writers of earlier generations. In 1970 she was awarded the Víctor Català prize for her collection of stories Molta roba i poc sabó, i tan neta que la volen (A Lot of Washing, Little Soap and as Clean as They Want It). Her second novel El temps de les cireres (The Cherry Season) obtained the 1976 Sant Jordi prize. The same year she had made a great impact with her rigorously well-documented book Els catalans als camps nazis (Catalans in the Nazi Camps) which contributed hitherto unknown material about the Holocaust, and for this she received the 1978 Serra d'Or Critics' prize. After a two months' stay in Russia as a guest of Progress Publishers of Moscow, she produced L'agulla daurada (The Golden Spire), a wide-ranging report on the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. She also worked as a journalist in the daily press and other media, and was openly linked with the struggle for women's rights.

She was a member of Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers) and, from 1989 to 1990, she was its vice-president for the Territorial Board of Catalonia.



Web page by Eva M. Millar for AELC.
Documentation: AELC.
Up-date: Heura Marçal Serra.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Photographs: © Pilar Aymerich.