Jordi Cussà Balaguer

(ESTATE OF)

Jordi Cussà (Berga, 1961-2021) was a writer, poet, translator, playwright and theater director.
 
During the 1980s he participated in short story contests and at that time he developed a drug addiction that he called "the red years." In the mid-90s, having already left the hell of addictions, he captured this experience in his first work, Cavalls Salvatges (2000). The following year the author, who wanted to make clear that "it is not the junkie who has written a book but the writer who had been junkie", publishes the historical novel La Serp (2001), finalist for the Leandre Colomer award, and began a very intense publication rhythm with the novels L'alfil sacrificat (2003), Apocalipsis de butxaca (2004), La novel·la de les ànimes (2005), Clara i les ombres (2007) and El noi de Sarajevo (2009), with which he wins El lector de l’Odissea award. The same year, the book of short stories Contes d’onada i de tornada is published as well as the collection of poems SensAles (2003), and Cussà begins his career as a English-Catalan translator with authors such as Patricia Highsmith, Chuck Palahniuk, William McLellan, Heather Dune Macadam, Edgar Allan Poe, John Boyne or Truman Capote, among others.
 
2015 marks an important moment in Cussà's career with the publication of Formentera lady, where he revisits the drug world from another point of view, and the revision and reissue of Cavalls salvatges in 2016. The same year El trobador Cuadeferro  is published, and the following year the follow up of La Serp, El Ciclop (2017).
 
Now a cult author, Cussà died in 2021 at the age of 60 in full creative effervescence: he was writing the script for Cavalls salvatges' graphic novel (2021) with the cartoonist and graphic humorist Kap, and had finished a new novel, Les muses ( 2022), published posthumously in March 2022. And he left the best possible legacy, a deep revision of his key works which Comanegra will publish between 2023 and 2024: Cavalls salvatges, Formentera lady, La serp and El Ciclop.

"Jordi Cussà, a classic of the future.", Mathew Tree