7.8 /10 1 Votes
Language Basque Publication date 1988 Pages 402 ISBN 8475682189 Country Spain | 3.9/5 Goodreads Publisher Erein Published in English 1992 Originally published 1988 Page count 402 Translator Margaret Jull Costa | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Esos cielos, Historias de Obaba, The Accordionist's Son, Seven Houses in France, Bilbao‑New York‑Bilbao | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bernardo atxaga obabakoak 2013 06 17
Obabakoak is a 1988 short story collection by the Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga. The title can be translated as "Individuals and things of Obaba". The book won the National Novel Prize.
Contents
Bernardo atxaga obabakoak
Themes
Atxaga described the idea behind the village Obaba: "Obaba is an interior landscape. You don't remember all the places of the past, but what sticks in the memory is this window, that stone, the bridge. Obaba is the country of my past, a mixture of the real and the emotional."
Reception
Maggie Traugott of The Independent wrote: "Atxaga loves parody, riddles, manipulating texts within texts, which could of course all turn pretentious and hard-going if it weren't handled with charm and dexterity." Traugott wrote that the Basque language "has been 'hiding away like a hedgehog', fortifying itself largely on an oral tradition. Atxaga has not only awakened the hedgehog, but has brought it into the context of his own wide and idiosyncratic reading of world literature."