The most successful literary titles of the last years in Spain is called “Patria”, and originates from Fernando Aramburu, Born in 1959: that Alone is a message, because of the thickness of the novel into German brought by Willi web and published by Rowohlt (F. A. Z. of 18. January 2018), it has a serious theme, also living in the society as to private: the terrorism of Eta and its crippling poison – narrow-mindedness and opportunism, repression and shame. Two families, once friends, a breaking up, because the father of a murdered Radical and the son of the other is involved. But when it comes to murder, it is in this Research as to the conflicting sensations, which are triggered by the violence in nine very different figures.
Paul Ingendaay
Europe correspondent of the critics in Berlin.
F. A. to be delivered
In an epilogue to the Spanish edition by the publishing house Tusquets (which also signed a contribution) look back Fernando Aramburu on the emergence of time and conception of his novel. At the beginning of a difficult decision that The author wanted to live at the age of fifty – eight published novels, which had given him respect, but material is not a lot of listed only as a writer, instead of to earn his money as a teacher. Authors in Spain little or nothing for book presentations. Poetry readings in the German understanding of it is anyway. The newspaper fees are lower, what is the location of the “free” writers, the need to get Involved in the culture operation, power is precarious.
In Germany, he barely had an audience
Fernando Aramburu had it even harder, because in Germany, where he lives since 1985, he had hardly an audience; Spanish organizers invited the man from Hanover, reluctantly, because his travels had caused such high costs. So his column in the daily newspaper “El País remained to him”.
However, dared Aramburu in 2009, the leap: His most extensive and ambitious work, he wrote with a Maximum of free time and a maximum concentration. The Roman “Patria” – 125 Chapter 700-plus pages – to know it’s there. Changing levels of time, a large staff, a complex fabric that fans out into many episodes of two decades, all of that is tamed with a steady Hand and a sound in tune. The effect, therefore, is reminiscent of intensive readings from youth days: You want to leave the Roman world and speaks more with the characters after the end of the reading a bit.
The success of the book was both the criticism and the readers is enormous and holds more than two years after the publication of still. Meanwhile, the Spanish edition of the “Patria has been widely used” in an edition of more than 800 000 copies in twenty languages, translated. The Text acts as a focal level, in which many Spaniards recognize your company, the sharpness of the political debate no less than the tendency to radicalism and dogmatism. The Catalonia conflict has raised the awareness of the people, that it can give when it comes to “homeland” and “Fatherland” quite different views – and that topic only, who adopted the all-too-Basic.
A climate of “good” violence and “bad” violence
For the author are the Central theme of the Basques themselves. In the afterword Aramburu describes vividly how early he perceived the terrorism and as a ordinary Background of the Basque life has felt. At parties, young people in the collective swash threw their Jackets in the air: an allusion to the Eta-bomb hurled in 1973 in Madrid as Franco’s successor-traded Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco and his company car twenty meters high in the air. The hatred of the Central government was in General, but the young Fernando Aramburu had even then an uneasy feeling: It couldn’t be right, so he felt, applauding the violent death of a human being.
