ernardo Atxaga is the pen name of a writer called Joseba Irazu Garmendia, from Asteasu, Gipuzkoa. (Not so long ago in Franco's Spain, it was not a smart move to write in Basque under one's own name).  Atxaga is the most internationally famous Basque-language writer ever.  As far as Basques writing in any language all time, he ranks -- with Unamuno, Pio Baroja and Laxalt -- at the very top.  

Born in 1951, Atxaga grew up in a Basque-speaking valley of scattered houses and villages near San Sebastian. Basque is a rural language, with no relation to neighbouring Spanish or French, and spoken in Atxaga's infancy by less than half a million people. Franco sought to eliminate it after the civil war: tombstones in Basque were torn up, and the language was forbidden in schools. Atxaga occupies a place between the avant-garde and fantastic realism, and the characters and environment he writes of - the Basque people, their world and struggles - are to the forefront in his writings. 

Obabakoak is Atxaga's best-known book, the one that brought him an international reputation. (The title Obabakoak may or may not mean: The things and people of the village of Obaba; It may be just that obaba is the sound a Basque baby makes.)   It is about storytelling in a language understood by a small group of people: a people that understand that if they were to choose not to use Basque, they would be complicit in the death of one of humanity's oldest and most distinct forms of speech. There is not a political word in the book; it is all political. When a writer chooses to write in a language that is marginalized, it is a political act.

Atxaga worked as an economist, bookseller, professer of the Basque language, a publisher, and a radio scriptwriter until 1980 when he dedicated himself completely to writing.  His first text published in 1972 in anthology of Basque Authors. His first short story, Ziutateak ("About The City"), published in 1976. His first collection of poetry, Etiopia ("Ethiopia"), appeared in 1978. He has written plays, song lyrics, novels and short stories. His book of short stories, Obabakoak ("Individuals and things of Obaba"), published in 1988 won him much fame and several prizes, such as Spain's National Literature Prize. So far, the book has been translated into more than 20 languages. 

David Cox reviewed Obabakoak, Atxaga's best-known book, the one that brought him an international reputation. While Atxaga is definitely a novelist, Obabakoak may or may not be a novel. It may be just a collection of stories. Connected or unconnected. It doesn't matter. There are no characters that you can follow all the way through the book, not even the village of Obaba which only appears and reappears from time to time. Obaba is a dark, mysterious place. A place where both local and universal stories are told. People from the outside are out of place there, and they stay that way. Nor is it all about Obaba. Parts take place in Hamburg, Peru, Castile, Iraq, and China. This is a Basque book and it is an international book. (The title Obabakoak may or may not mean: The things and people of the village of Obaba; It may be just that obaba is the sound a Basque baby makes.)

In The Son of the Accordionist, Atxaga returns to his fictional town of Obaba. While in Obabakoak, politics is so far below the surface as to be invisible or at least allegorical, his two short novels (known in English as "The Lone Man" and "The Lone Woman)" are overtly about politics. In El Hijo del Acordeonista (The Accordionist's Son), the politics works at both a symbolic level and at the level of the action. The two worlds -- the two Obabas -- the middle-class world and the world of the peasant families; the Spanish town and the hidden Basque town, move together and move apart through the action of the novel. David discovers the nation within a nation, found within the Basque village of the Franco era. Basque communities only existed in shadowy form for Atxaga's/David's generation, but it was his generation that fought and engineered the defeat of the last fascist regime in Europe. The war touched every community in Spain, particularly in the Basque country because of the severe repression afterwards.

Cox believes this to be a brilliant, moving book. It does not exploit the reader. It is about storytelling. It is about storytelling in a language understood by a small group of people: a people that understand that if they were to choose not to use Basque, they would be complicit in the death of one of humanity's oldest and most distinct forms of speech. There is not a political word in the book; it is all political. When a writer chooses to write in a language that is marginalized, it is a political act. There are no literary signposts for such a writer.

As Cox concludes, when you grow up under a dictatorship, you learn to use metaphor well. This is a book of many levels, many layers. In Obaba there is no political violence, no prison cells or torture. Or is there? There is a "prison" full of lizards. What does a lizard do? The lizard in this book is said to go into a young person's ear. After this happens, the person is never the same. Is the lizard a language? Imperialism?