• Source: Obabakoak

    • Obabakoak is a 1988 novel by the Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga. The title can be translated as "Those from Obaba". The book won the National Literature Prize for Narrative. It is the most internationally successful book in Basque and has been translated into numerous languages. The original Basque version was published by Editorial Erein in 1988, and the author's own Spanish version was published by Ediciones B in 1989. An English translation by Margaret Jull Costa based on the Spanish version was published in 1992.


    Contents


    Childhoods
    Esteban Werfell
    An exposition of Canon Lizardi's letter
    Post tenebras spero lucem
    If I could, I'd go out for a stroll every night: I. Katharina's statement
    If I could, I'd go out for a stroll every night: II. Marie's statement
    Nine words in honour of the village of Villamediana
    In search of the last word
    Young and green
    The rich merchant's servant
    Regarding stories
    Dayoub, the rich merchant's servant
    Mr Smith
    Maiden name, Laura Sligo
    Finis coronat opus
    In the morning
    Hans Menscher
    How to write a story in five minutes
    Klaus Hanhn
    Marggarete and Heinrich, twins
    I, Jean Baptiste Hargous
    How to plagiarise
    The crevasse
    A Rhine wine
    Samuel Telleria Uribe
    Wei Lie Deshang
    X and Y
    The torch
    By way of an autobiography


    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."


    See also


    1988 in literature
    Basque literature


    References

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