Introduction by Dominic Keown, Reader in Catalan Studies at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

· An A to Z of satirical humour

· Easy to dip into, hard to dip out of

· A Spanish Classic

DOING We are always doing something different from what we were meant to.

DYING Dying too young is a mistake. Dying too old as well. In general, dying is always a mistake. The trouble is that we could say the same thing about living.

Dictionary for the Idle includes chapters on:

Clocks and watches
Plagiarism
Quixotism
Reading
Temperance
Vengeance
Vice
Xenophobia… and all stops in between

The Dictionary itself is Quixotic, giving little prominence to the important but providing scholarly essays on the unimportant.

This is a book you can dip in to – get hooked, and flip from entry to entry.

Many of the entries are allegorical – about living under the Franco dictatorship. Many of the entries are not.

Joan Fuster was chair of Catalan literature in Valencia. During his lifetime he was burnt in effigy by fascists and survived a bombing at his house. In death, his grave was desecrated. He is still revered as Catalonia’s premier essayist.