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Summary
Summary
Fernando Aramburu's internationally acclaimed novel evokes an unresolved history of violence, giving a fictional account of lives shattered by Basque terrorism even as it rekindles debate about truth and reconciliation.
Lifetime friends become bitter enemies when the father of one family is killed by militants--one of whom is a son from the other family. Told in short sections highlighting a rich multiplicity of characters from all walks of life, Homeland brilliantly unfolds in nonlinear fashion as it traces the moral dilemmas faced by the families of murder victim and perpetrator alike. Aramburu alludes only obliquely to the historical context while he focuses on the psychological complexity of his characters and builds nearly unbearable suspense.
Author Notes
Born in San Sebastián, Spain, in 1959, FERNANDO ARAMBURU is considered one of the most remarkable writers in the Spanish language. He won the Ramón Gómez de la Serna Prize in 1997, the Euskadi Prize in 2001, and, for his short story collection Los peces de la amargura, the Mario Vargas Llosa NH Short Story Award, the Dulce Chacón Prize, and the Prize of the Spanish Roal Academy in 2008. Among his most recent novels, Años lentos won the Premio Tusquets de Novela in 2011 and was named Book of the Year in 2012 by the booksellers of Madrid. But it is his novel Patria (Homeland), a stunning success among readers and winner of unanimous acclaim (National Prize for Literature, National Critics Prize, Euskadi Prize, Francisco Umbral Prize, Strega European Prize, Tomasi di Lampedusa Prize, among many others) that has distinguished him as a writer who will leave his mark on our era.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With a single broadcast in 2011, the ETA Basque separatist group abandoned its campaign for an independent Basque homeland, ending more than 50 years of armed conflict with the Spanish government. Its legacy-wounded families and broken communities-is the heart of Aramburu's magnificent novel, his first to be translated into English. The ceasefire allows Bittori, an elderly widow whose husband was assassinated by an ETA gunman, to return to her provincial village, setting off a reckoning with her childhood best friend Miren, a fervent nationalist who distanced herself from Bittori after her eldest son joined the ETA. Bittori is welcomed back by Miren's daughter, Aranxta, who sets out to find them a measure of peace. Aramburu spends decades with the families as the conflict contorts their lives. The cast is sprawling-with both matriarchs, husbands, five children, spouses, grandchildren-but each's story is realized masterfully, as the characters look to escape violence however they can, be it exile, alcohol, or love. Aramburu's remarkable novel is an honest and empathetic portrait of suffering and forgiveness, home and family. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Unhealed wounds, physical and psychological, afflict two families on opposite sides of the Basque conflict in Aramburu's literary plea for regional reconciliation. Txato, a small-town factory owner, is murdered for not paying a bribe. Years later, after the national ceasefire, his widow returns to their home still aching from the loss but ready for change. But neighbors Miren and her spouse, Joxián, were on the other side of the strife, and their son, the brutally unrepentant Joxe Mari, languishes in a faraway prison. His sister Aranxta is left debilitated by a stroke, but her vulnerability contains within it an exemplary resilience. Aramburu's plot is simple but unfolds in a somewhat complicated fashion, with flashbacks and multiple points of view. The psychological complexity of his characters, especially the women, creates dramatic intensity. One of the first literary novels to directly address the ongoing consequences of Basque sectarian violence, this is a blockbuster in Spain. A premium-cable adaptation said to be in the works will likely generate continued interest on this side of the Atlantic.--Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"HOMELAND" IS THE STORY of two families in a Basque village. It toggles back and forth in time, illuminating the enmity between members of multiple generations and hinting at a once and future closeness. Although it hinges on a particular ekintza, or attack, by members of the paramilitary organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), its true protagonists are the matriarchs of these families, spiteful Miren and grief-stricken Bittori, as well as their daughters, Arantxa and Nerea. It is these women who make things happen. The men who kill and are killed are mere "jellyfish" in the wash of history. Fernando Aramburu's gift lies in the links between action and reaction: the moment Bittori understands she's been snubbed on purpose at the village butcher's when her husband has been marked as an ETA target, or the aftermath of the argument between Miren and Arantxa about the nature of the violence, when Miren's husband, "staggering with sorrow, tried to stop his daughter and his grandchildren" from leaving the house (to no avail, as the mother and daughter won't speak to each other for five years). What he doesn't get into is cause and effect. And while the book overflows with tight, cinematic scenes, it remains static, almost dull. It reads like a long catalog of victimhood, sparing none of its characters. Glimpses into the origins of their friendships, or the nature of their filial piety or their love, are few and far between. The question of Basque nationhood dominates every other question. Yet the novel also does not delve into the meaning of the nation, the history of Spain or the slide of the liberation movement into violent struggle and outright terrorism, preferring to hover over a few ordinary thugs whose adolescent impulses are channeled into the ekintza that shatters the bond between Miren and Bittori. "Homeland" oscillates between a telenovela without intrigue and Dostoyevsky without moral inquiry. Arantxa suffers a stroke that leaves her incapacitated, and is deserted by her philandering husband (a teleno vela standard); Nerea and her brother debate how to mourn their murdered father, never coming to any understanding of each other or themselves. No one feels too strongly. Aramburu has enjoyed a successful career in Spanish, publishing a number of novels, short stories and a children's book before arriving at "Homeland." The translation is by Alfred MacAdam, a man with a similarly distinguished career. In many ways, the two are a good match. While translators cannot turn bad books into great ones, they can make good books mediocre. Here, the lackluster prose, while much clumsier and more confusing than the original Spanish, suits the desultory social landscape it describes. Near the end of the novel, Nerea's brother, Xabier, attends a meeting of the Victims of Terrorism in Basque Country Collective in San Sebastián. An unnamed writer gives a hopeful description of his latest literary project, and Xabier's reaction seems to contain both the reason for "Homeland"'s existence and the reason it doesn't really work: "The writer spoke calmly. Xabier thinks his intentions are good, but he does not believe anything will substantially change because someone's written a book. It seems to him that, until now, Basque writers have paid little attention to the victims of terrorism. The victimizers are far more interesting - their crises of conscience, their sentimental back stories and things like that. " Maybe, as a Basque writer, Aramburu hopes to remedy this dearth of attention to the victims of ETA. But "Homeland" is indeed less interesting than it could have been with more balance and more motion in any direction, more "things like that." JENNIFER croft is a writer and translator. Her novel, "Homesick " will be published in September.
Kirkus Review
Complex tale of the long-lingering effects of political murder in a Basque town."Before what happened with Txato," writes San Sebastin native Aramburu, "Bittori had been a believer." What happened with Txato is revealed, bit by bit, over the course of 125 short chapters that focus on the many players involved, but the basic facts emerge early on: A businessman, Txato, has been murdered by a member of the Basque separatist group ETA, who are criminals or freedom fighters depending on one's point of view. Bittori, Txato's widow, knows what side she falls on; she has to be dissuaded from including a denunciation of the movement on Txato's tombstone, for fear that there will be further trouble. "They already killed him once," Bittori replies. "I don't think they'll kill him again." But death and sorrow ensue all the same: Bittori loses both her faith and the friendship of her childhood companion, Miren, even as her own children slip away, unable to face the tragedy; her daughter, Nerea, does not even attend the funeral, perhaps for fear of being targeted herself, while Bittori leaves her village so that she "wouldn't have to go on suffering the menacing stares of the neighborsfriendly for so many years and then, suddenly, just the opposite." For her part, Miren undergoes trials of her own: One of her sons has been imprisoned as an ETA terrorist, while her own daughter, Arantxa, has been paralyzed by a stroke. For all their shared tribulations, Miren and Bittori, once the closest of friends, now stand on opposite sides of a vast gulf, and if life goes on, it goes on without them; the novel's closing words make clear that their wounds will never be healed. Aramburu recounts the lives of ordinary people shattered by events that are ongoing in Spain today even years after ETA has suspended its armed campaign; the reader needs no background in that tangled history to understand that basic, terrible truth.A humane, memorable work of literature. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A Basque-born novelist now living in Germany, Aramburu unfolds the consequences of the Basque insurgency while asking us to ponder larger issues of violence, friendship, and moral choice. When Bittori returns to the hometown where her husband was killed, people avoid her, fearing that she means to stir up trouble. Generous Txato was accused in graffiti of snitching on the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the Basque Homeland and Liberty), and the killers included the son of Bittori's sister-close friend, Miren. The narrative travels through decades, shifting between the families' past and present relationship, Bittori's suffering, defensive Miren's decision to support her radical son, and the tragedy of Miren's daughter, felled by a stroke in her forties and a bridge between the families. VERDICT Punch-in-the-face powerful with a bittersweet ending; this leading Spanish novelist's first English-language outing is a masterpiece. [See Prepub Alert, 9/24/18.] © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1. HIGH HEELS ON PARQUET Poor thing, there she goes: about to crash into him the way a wave crashes into rocks. A little foam and goodbye. Doesn't she realize he doesn't even bother to open the door for her? His slave and more than his slave. And those heels, those red lips when she's already forty-five years old: what for? With your standing, girl, with your position and education, what would make you carry on like a teenager? If aita were here to see . . . Getting into the car, Nerea glanced up at the window where she assumed her mother would, as usual, be spying on her through the curtain. Even if she couldn't see her from the street, she knew Bittori was staring at her, whispering to herself, there goes the poor thing, a trophy for that egoist who never thought for a second about making someone happy. Doesn't she realize that a woman must be really desperate if she has to seduce her husband after twelve years of marriage? It's a good thing they never had children. Nerea waved goodbye before getting into the taxi. Her mother, on the fourth floor, hidden behind the curtain, looked away. Beyond the tiled roofs was a wide strip of ocean, the lighthouse on Santa Clara Island, tenuous clouds in the distance. The weather lady predicted sunshine. And her mother looked again toward the street and the taxi, which was now out of sight. She stared beyond the roof tiles, beyond the island and the blue horizon line, beyond the remote clouds, and even beyond that into the past forever lost, searching for scenes from her daughter's wedding. And she saw Nerea once again in the Good Shepherd Cathedral, dressed in white, with her bouquet and her excessive happiness. Watching her daughter leave--so slim, such a smile, so pretty--Bittori felt a premonition come over her. At night, when she went back to her house alone, she was on the verge of confessing her fears to her photograph of Txato. But she had a headache, and besides, when it came to family matters, especially his daughter, Txato was sentimental. Tears came easily to his eyes, and even though photos don't cry, I know what I'm talking about. The high heels were supposed to make Quique voracious. Click, click, click --she'd dented the parquet. Let's see if she punches holes in it. To keep peace in the house, she didn't scold her. They were only going to be there for a minute. They'd come to say goodbye. And him, it was nine o'clock in the morning and his breath stank of whiskey or of one of those drinks he sold. " Ama , are you sure you're going to be okay by yourself?" "Why don't you take the bus to the airport? The taxi from here to Bilbao is going to cost a fortune." He: "Don't worry about that." He pointed out they had baggage, that the bus would be uncomfortable, slow. "Right, but you have enough time, don't you?" " Ama , don't make a big deal out of it. We decided to take a taxi. It's the easiest way to get there." Quique was beginning to lose patience. "It's the only comfortable way to get there." He added that he was going to step outside to smoke a cigarette--"while you two talk." That man reeked of perfume. But his mouth stank of liquor, and it was only nine in the morning. He said goodbye checking his face in the living-room mirror. Conceited ass. And then--was he being authoritarian, cordial but curt?--to Nerea: "Don't take too long." Five minutes, she promised. Which turned into fifteen. Alone, she said to her mother that this trip to London meant a lot to her. "I just don't see what you have to do with your husband's clients. Or is it that you've started working in his business without telling me?" "In London I'm going to make a serious attempt to save our marriage." "Another?" "The last one." "So what's the plan this time? Going to stay close to him so he doesn't take off with the first woman he sees?" " Ama , please. Don't make it harder for me." "You look great. Going to a new hairdresser?" "I still go to the same one." Nerea suddenly lowered her voice. As soon as she started whispering, her mother turned to look toward the front door, as if she were afraid some stranger was spying on her. No, nothing. They'd given up on the idea of adopting a baby. How they had talked about it! Maybe a Chinese baby, a Russian, a little black one. Boy or girl. Nerea still held on to her illusion, but Quique had given up. He wants his own child, flesh of his flesh. Bittori: "So he's quoting the Bible now?" "He thinks he's up-to-date, but he's more traditional than rice pudding." On her own, Nerea had investigated all the legal formalities involved in adoption and, yes, they satisfied all of them. The money involved was no problem. She was willing to travel to the other end of the world to be a mother. But Quique had cut off the conversation. No, no, and more no. "That boy's a bit lacking in sensitivity, don't you think?" "He wants a little boy of his own, who looks like him, who will play for La Real some day. He's obsessed, ama . And he'll get what he wants. Wow! When he digs in on something! I don't know with what woman. Some volunteer. Don't ask me. I don't have the slightest idea. He'll rent out some womb, pay whatever you have to pay. As far as I'm concerned, I'd help him find a healthy woman who'd make his wish come true." "You're nuts." "I haven't told him yet, but I imagine I might get a chance in London. I've thought it through. I don't have any right to make him be unhappy." They touched cheeks by the front door. Bittori: okay, she'd be fine on her own, have a great trip. Nerea, out in the hall as she waited for the elevator, said something about bad luck but that we should never give up happiness. Then she suggested her mother change the doormat. Excerpted from Homeland: A Novel by Fernando Aramburu All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
