Obabakoak

Last updated
Obabakoak
Obabakoak.jpg
First edition (Basque)
Author Bernardo Atxaga
Translator Margaret Jull Costa
CountrySpain
LanguageBasque
PublisherErein
Publication date
1988
Published in English
1992
Pages402
ISBN 8475682189

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. [1] 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

Contents

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." [2]

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." [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Mahabharata</i> Major Hindu epic

The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors.

<i>One Thousand and One Nights</i> Collection of Middle Eastern folk stories

One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takiji Kobayashi</span> Japanese writer

Takiji Kobayashi was a Japanese writer of proletarian literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardo Atxaga</span> Basque author

Bernardo Atxaga, pseudonym of Joseba Irazu Garmendia, is a Spanish Basque writer and self-translator.

<i>Dead Souls</i> 1842 novel by Nikolai Gogol

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "novel in verse". Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence, it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form.

<i>Cilappatikaram</i> Ancient Tamil Hindu–Jain epic

Cilappatikāram, also referred to as Silappathikaram or Silappatikaram, is the earliest Tamil epic. It is a poem of 5,730 lines in almost entirely akaval (aciriyam) meter. The epic is a tragic love story of an ordinary couple, Kannaki and her husband Kovalan. The Cilappathikaram has more ancient roots in the Tamil bardic tradition, as Kannaki and other characters of the story are mentioned or alluded to in the Sangam literature such as in the Naṟṟiṇai and later texts such as the Kovalam Katai. It is attributed to a prince-turned-monk Iḷaṅkõ Aṭikaḷ, and was probably composed in the 5th or 6th century CE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Three Billy Goats Gruff</span> Norwegian fairy tale

"Three Billy Goats Gruff" is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr, first published between 1841 and 1844. It has an Aarne-Thompson type of 122E. The first version of the story in English appeared in George Webbe Dasent's translation of some of the Norske Folkeeventyr, published as Popular Tales from the Norse in 1859. The heroes of the tale are three male goats who need to outsmart a ravenous troll to cross the bridge to their feeding ground.

Snow Country is a novel by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. The novel is considered a classic work of Japanese literature and was among the three novels the Nobel Committee cited in 1968, when Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Margaret Elisabeth Jull Costa OBE, OIH is a British translator of Portuguese- and Spanish-language fiction and poetry, including the works of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Paulo Coelho, Bernardo Atxaga, Carmen Martín Gaite, Javier Marías, and José Régio. She has won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize more times than any other translator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans My Hedgehog</span> German fairy tale

"Hans My Hedgehog" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. The tale was translated as Jack My Hedgehog by Andrew Lang and published in The Green Fairy Book. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 441.

<i>The Golden Bowl</i> (film) 2000 drama film directed by James Ivory

The Golden Bowl is a 2000 period romantic drama film directed by James Ivory. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the 1904 novel of the same name by Henry James, who considered the work his masterpiece. It stars Kate Beckinsale, James Fox, Anjelica Huston, Nick Nolte, Jeremy Northam, Madeleine Potter, and Uma Thurman.

<i>Raise the Red Lantern</i> (novella) 1990 novel by Su Tong

Raise the Red Lantern, originally known as Wives and Concubines, is a 1990 novella by Su Tong, published by Yuan-Liou Publishing Co. (遠流出版公司), that describes a female former university student whose mind is broken by the concubine system in 1930s China. It was adapted into the 1991 film, Raise the Red Lantern, by Zhang Yimou.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kjell Westö</span> Finnish writer and journalist

Kjell Westö is a Finnish author and journalist. Westö writes in Swedish. Best known for his epic novels set in Helsinki, he has also written short stories, poetry, essays and newspaper columns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseba Sarrionandia</span>

Joseba Sarrionandia Uribelarrea is a Basque writer who has published a large number of books of poetry and short stories, as well as novels. He has been awarded on numerous occasions for his work, and is nowadays a respected literary personality in the Basque Country.

<i>Ermita</i> (novel) 1988 novel by F. Sionil José

Ermita: A Filipino Novel is a novel by the known Filipino author F. Sionil Jose written in the English language. A chapter of this novel was previously published as a novella in the books titled Two Filipino Women and Three Filipino Women.

<i>Onitsha</i> (novel) Book by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Onitsha is a novel by French Nobel laureate writer J. M. G. Le Clézio. It was originally published in French in 1991 and an English translation was released in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Basque literature</span>

Although the first instances of coherent Basque phrases and sentences go as far back as the San Millán glosses of around 950, the large-scale damage done by periods of great instability and warfare, such as the clan wars of the Middle Ages, the Carlist Wars and the Spanish Civil War, led to the scarcity of written material predating the 16th century.

<i>Saraswatichandra</i> (novel) Gujarati novel by Govardhanram Tripathi

Saraswatichandra is a Gujarati novel by Govardhanram Madhavaram Tripathi, an author of early twentieth century from Gujarat, India. Set in 19th-century India, It is acclaimed as one of the masterpiece of Gujarati literature. Though the novel was published in four parts, each part has a distinct thematic content, its own cast of characters and independent beginnings and ends. It was adapted into several plays, radio plays, films and TV series. It was well received by the number of critics, and was translated into several Indian languages, along with English. However, Suresh Joshi, a strong proponent of formalism theory, criticized the novel for its structural failure.

Koldo Izagirre Urreaga is an innovative Basque writer who has worked in several genres of literature, including poetry, novels, and tales. Izagirre has translated works by classic authors into other languages. He has also written texts, both for young people and adults. In addition, he has produced journal and magazine articles, and written television and film scripts.

The Etxepare Basque Institute is a public agency created by the Basque Government. The Institute is named after Bernat Etxepare, author of Linguae Vasconum Primitiae (1545), the first book to be published in the Basque language, or Euskara. The phrase that defines the Institute can be found in that first book: "Heuscara/Ialgi hadi mundura".

References

  1. "Premios Nacionales de Literatura / Modalidad Narrativa: Premiados". mcu.es. Ministry of Culture . Retrieved 2012-04-09.
  2. Eaude, Michael (2001-10-20). "A bridge across the great divide". The Guardian . Retrieved 2012-04-09.
  3. Traugott, Maggie (1992-08-30). "Waking the hedgehog". The Independent . Retrieved 2012-04-09.