by Fernando Aramburu · Tusquets Editores S.A. · tapa blanda · ISBN 9788411072465
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In the late sixties, the protagonist, an eight-year-old boy, moves to San Sebastián to live with his uncles. There he witnesses how the days pass in the family and the neighborhood: his uncle Vicente, of weak character, divides his life between the factory and the tavern, and it is his aunt Maripuy, a woman of strong personality but subjected to the social and religious conventions of the time, who actually governs the family; his cousin Mari Nieves lives obsessed with boys, and the surly and taciturn cousin Julen is indoctrinated by the parish priest to end up enrolled in an incipient ETA. The destiny of all of them - which is that of so many secondary characters in History, cornered between need and ignorance - will suffer, years later, a break. Alternating the memories of the protagonist with the notes of the writer, Años lentos also offers a brilliant reflection on how life is distilled in a novel, how sentimental memory is transferred into collective memory, while its diaphanous writing reveals a murky background of guilt in the recent history of the Basque Country.
Basque novelist based in Germany, author of Homeland, a major literary phenomenon about ETA terrorism and Basque society.
