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 Novel Prize. 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
1988 short story collections
Basque-language books
Spanish books
