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The internationally acclaimed novel that limns a decades-long relationship between two Basque families torn asunder by the violent insurgency of the separatist movement ETA - arguably the most acclaimed and successful literary novel published in Spain in recent times.
Here is the story of two families in small-town Basque country, pitted against each other by the ideology and violence of the terrorist group ETA, from the unrelentingly grim 1980s to October 2011 when the group proclaimed an end to its savage insurgency. Erstwhile lifetime friends - especially the generation of parents on both sides - the two families become bitter enemies when a father of one is killed by ETA militants, among them one of the sons of the other family.
Told through a succession of more than one hundred short sections devoted to a rich multiplicity of characters whose role in the story becomes clear as one reads. Homeland brilliantly unfolds in nonlinear fashion as it traces the consequences for the families of both the murder victim and the perpetrator. Aramburu alludes only obliquely to a historical matrix even as he focuses on the psychological complexity of his characters while building nearly unbearable narrative tension.
"Starred Review. Remarkable... An honest and empathetic portrait of suffering and forgiveness, home and family." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A humane, memorable work of literature." - Kirkus
"It's been a long time since I've read a book so persuasive and moving, so intelligently conceived, a fiction that is also an eloquent testament to a historical reality." - Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
This information about Homeland was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Fernando Aramburu was born in 1959 in San Sebastián (or Donostia as it is called in Basque), and has lived in Germany since 1985. Aramburu established himself as a major Spanish novelist with his Antibula Trilogy - Fuegos con limón (1996), Bami sin sombra (2005) and La gran Marivián (2013) - Antibula being an imaginary state, which is and is not the Basque country, bedeviled by terrorism, regionalism and nationalism. Homeland is his first book translated into English.
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.
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