Obabakoak by Bernardo Atxaga

From the Publisher

A unique and stunning international literary event: winner of Spain's National Prize for Literature, Obabakoak, a work of fiction, is one of only several hundred books to be written in four centuries in Basque, a language understood by few (the author himself had to translate his book into Spanish to broaden its appeal throughout Europe, where it has been published to ecstatic acclaim). Obabakoak means "the people and things of Obaba (a Basque village)," and the narrator weaves a tale reminiscent of Scheherazade's. The village is peopled with rascals, innocents, intellectuals, shepherds, hunters, idiots, and creatures of superstition, and the interconnection of their private worlds is brilliantly evoked. Parody, riddles, texts within texts abound in a book that is playful yet always tinged with melancholy. Possessed of the timelessness of the fairy tale and informed by the lore of the oral tradition - and offering a good-humored spin through metaliterature and intertextuality - Obabakoak is a multi-faceted and rousing celebration of the art of storytelling.

Publishers Weekly

This loosely structured novel centered on a remote Basque village portrays life as a perilous journey in which chance and free will intervene in equal measures. An unobtrusively dazzling collage of seemingly unrelated stories, town gossip, diary excerpts and literary theory, all held together by Atxaga's distinctive, tenderly ironic voice, it won Spain's National Prize for Literature. The Basque novelist and poet peoples the town of Obaba and its environs with a lovelorn schoolmistress, a cultured but self-hating dwarf, a schoolboy whose mining engineer father tricks him into growing up and an environmentalist who rescues lizards after playing wicked tricks with them as a youth. Atxaga also spins tales of a German painter driven mad by guilt over his romance with an Arab woman; of an Irish woman in search of her doctor husband who is missing in the Amazon jungle; and of a rescue mission on a Swiss mountain climbing expedition in Nepal that turns to murder. (Apr.)

Library Journal

In the prolog to this novel, Atxaga explains the intricacies of his native culture: ``I write in a strange language. Its verbs, the structure of its relative clauses, have no sisters anywhere on Earth.'' Translated into English from the author's own Spanish translation of the original text written in Basque, the work has everything to do with the language of a people and culture living on the fringes of society. Like the single-laned, rutted, dirt roads that link the sparsely populated villages in the fictitious region of Obaba, Atxaga (a la Gabriel Garcia Marquez) has compiled a series of independent and interrelated stories that introduce the reader to a cross-section of Obaban society. Through the eyes of these numerous protagonists, who can vary from chapter to chapter, Atxaga reviews and foreshadows the paralyzing effect superstition and myth-making can have on the individual and society. He both respects and fears the inherent introversion of his people--so ably reflected in a language spoken by only a handful of human beings. Obabakoak , winner of Spain's National Prize for Literature, is a tribute to the Basque people's language and culture.-- David H. Miller, New York

What People Are Saying

A. S. Byatt
"Atxaga is a brilliantly inventive writer...Obabakoak is at once terribly moving and wildly funny."

Product Details

• ISBN: 846632092X
  
• ISBN-13: 9788466320924
• Format: Paperback, 442pp
• Publisher: Santillana USA Publishing Company
• Pub. Date: April 2008
• Edition Description: Spanish-language Edition
• Sales Rank: 213,358
• Series: Narrativa (Punto de Lectura) Ser.