Daniel Igra
Words in the Earth
The Accordionist's Son
By Bernardo Atxaga (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa)
Harvill Secker 389pp £17.99 order from our bookshop
Bernardo Atxaga hasn’t taken kindly to being labelled a Basque writer. His stories, he argues, hold universal appeal. And he has a point, given that they’ve been translated into over twenty languages. But while his novels are eminently exportable, they are also recognisably Basque, with their roots firmly grounded in the land, language and history of Atxaga’s homeland.
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