The Rius Family Saga

In a single volume, the two great successes of Ignacio Agustí’s novel series about the Barcelona bourgeoisie. 

The Rius Family Saga stands as one of the most ambitious and enduring works of contemporary Catalan fiction. Conceived as a multi-generational novel, it traces the rise, fracture, and moral erosion of a bourgeois family across decades of political upheaval, private ambition, and inherited silence. More than a family chronicle, the novel is a portrait of a society in transformation. 

With precise, unsentimental prose, the author dissects power, class, and memory, exposing how personal choices are shaped—and often corrupted—by historical forces. Intimate and panoramic at once, The Rius Family Saga explores loyalty, betrayal, and the cost of survival, offering a lucid, relentless meditation on legacy and identity. A major work of realist fiction, both intellectually rigorous and emotionally exacting. 

“Mariona’s silk dress rustled, snagged on a button, on a nail perhaps, tearing it. He seized her firmly by the waist. He picked up her glove. He carried her, supported at the waist, over his shoulder. Her hair, loose, floated. He crossed the passageway slowly, so as not to hurt her, carefully, with his head held high, his chin thrust forward. He managed to reach the entrance hall, then the first step of the staircase. He succeeded in keeping his footing steady. One by one, with growing confidence, he climbed the steps, keeping to the outer edge of the carpet to feel the reassurance of contact. And at the end of the first flight, almost on the landing, he stopped, because he had heard the murmur of something being lost, fleeing with a crystalline sound; it was sharp, solid little taps, skipping over the marble steps. He turned slightly and saw the pearls of the necklace bouncing down the steps until they reached the floor…”