Obabakoak

Description

A sprawling carnivalesque set in an eccentric village, this is a wildly unusual novel, originally written in Basque, from one of the most exciting talents in contemporary European literature. One of only a hundred or so books originally written in the Basque language during the last four centuries, Obabakoak is a shimmering, mercurial novel about life in Obaba, a remote, exotic, Basque village. Obaba is peopled with innocents and intellectuals, shepherds and schoolchildren, whilst everyone from a lovelorn schoolmistress to a cultured but self-hating dwarf wanders across the page. Obabakoak is a dazzling collage of stories, town gossip, diary excerpts and literary theory, all held together by Atxaga's distinctive and tenderly ironic voice.

Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including The Accordionist's Son and Seven Houses in France, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages.

A fine, shimmering, mercurial novel * Observer * A brilliantly inventive writer...He understands the nature of story telling and is at once terribly moving and wildly funny -- A. S. Byatt An impressive intellectual achievement * New Statesman * Atxaga holds the attention by his sheer craft, by the complete control he exhibits * Independent * This English version beautifully retains Mr. Atxaga's magically flowing and seemingly simple style... an achievement not made easy by his considerable technical and linguistic virtuosity and his love of inventing ways to make language itself speak with new voices * New York Times Book Review *