In May 1937, after the bombardment of Guernica, thousands of Basque children left the port of Santurce on their way into exile, to save themselves from the savagery of war. These included Carmen; an eight-year-old girl who took shelter in the house of a writer and translator of Lorca in Belgium. Carmen would live without roots, sheltered by her new family. When her adoptive father dies, on the final day of the Second World War, she returns to Franco’s Spain and makes a new life for herself with her biological family.
A story of exile told with sensitivity, tenderness and narrative skill from the Winner of the National Prize for Fiction.
“Uribe answers the essential question of literature... The novel is set in an absolutely modern territory, the habitual ground of fundamental contemporary writers such as Emmanuel Carrere, W.G. Sebald, J.M. Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk”, SudOuest.
“The book really is as beautiful as a memory”, Le Figaro.
A novel that mixes fiction and reality set in the period between the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War and running to the present day.
A story of parents and children and husbands and wives, a story of friendship but above all a story of exile told with sensitivity, tenderness and the narrative skill of Kirmen Uribe.
Gallimard (France), Planeta Manuscrito (Portugal), Geopoetika (Serbia), Gernika (Russia), Enthusiast (Bulgaria), Cankarjeva založba (Slovenia), Ilia State University (Georgia), Toena (Albania), Xerais (Galician).
Top