We are talking about the novel "Homeland" by the Spanish writer Fernando Aramburu. This is a story of two once friendly families, divided by the Basque terror, in which there are no negative characters. We have before us the ideal novel about social division, which will interest the reader.
Fernando Aramburu was born in San Sebastián in 1959. He has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Zaragoza and has lived in Germany since 1985. He was a member of the CLOC Group of Arte y Desarte. Already considered one of the most prominent storytellers of his generation, he is the author of three books of short stories: No ser no hurts (1997), Los pez de la amargura (2006) and El vigilante del fiordo (2011), and five novels
The novel by the Spaniard Fernando Aramburu, which has become almost the main literary event in Spain in recent years, belongs to a rare (and therefore especially valuable) category of books that "work" on two levels at once: as a local, extremely specific story, and how a great human drama, global and timeless. The theme of Basque terror in the 1970s and 1990s (it is this theme that plays the role of a semantic axis in the novel) is important for Aramburu, a native of the Basque Country, both in itself and as a universal metaphor for a split, bleeding society.
In Rodina, the symbolic line of social division takes on quite material outlines: it runs through the territory of a small village in the suburbs of San Sebastian, separating two families that were once linked by the closest friendship. On one side of this border - invisible but insurmountable - there are the widow and children of a local entrepreneur Chato, who was killed by terrorists for refusing to pay the "revolutionary tax" (in fact, the racketeering bribe that the ETA leadership collected from the wealthy Basques). On the other, the family of his best friend, foundry worker Hoshian, whose middle son Jose Mari joined the terrorists, participated in the murder of Chato, and is now serving a long term in prison.
These families have a lot in common: in both of them, de facto women are at the helm - the unyielding, decisive, irreconcilable Bittori and Miren (also, by the way, in the past, the closest friends). In both families, the children do not have a personal life: the eldest daughter of Hoshian and Miren Arancha breaks up with her husband, the youngest son Gorka, an aspiring writer, does not dare to confess to his parents that he is gay for a long time. The son of Chato and Bittori, a serious and responsible Xavier, shocked by the murder of his father, does not dare to connect his life with his beloved woman, and his frivolous sister Nereya, after a series of novels, chooses a selfish, absurd and licentious man. The same problems, the same interests (Hoshian and Chato ride bicycles and play cards together, Arancia and Nereya go to dances together, Miren and Bittori share the most intimate with each other), a common language, a common culture, a common life - and yet some in this conflict are destined for the role of victims of terror, others - his accomplices (and then - victims of terror by the state).
In practice, however, the crack separating the two families has even more intricate contours. For the time being, Chato's daughter Nereya flirts with nationalism and supports terror, while the daughter of Hoshian Arancha, who is in love with a Spaniard, resolutely rejects him. The militant ETA Jose Mari cannot accept the lifestyle of his literary brother, whom he considers a weakling, and the intelligent Gorku is tormented by guilt in front of the people whom Jose Mari and his comrades have caused suffering. Miren, at first indifferent to the Basque struggle for self-determination, is gradually becoming a furious nationalist, while Hoshian wants only one thing - to return his son home, even if for this he will have to give up his beliefs. And all of them, regardless of their views, finding themselves outside the Basque country, immediately feel like strangers and "damned terrorists", objects of hatred, fear and contempt on the part of the Spaniards.
Fernando Aramburu's novel is built non-linearly: the text is cut into many complex chronological layers, and the focus is constantly shifting from one character to another. The plot gaps are filled gradually, we observe some events from several angles at once, and some remain behind the scenes, however, little by little, a clear parabolic structure begins to be seen in the history of the two families: first, relations move from intimacy and friendship to alienation and enmity, and then to fragile, insecure and half-hearted, but still reconciliation.
It is customary to expect comfortable simplicity from a novel devoted to such a topic - the author's solidarity with one of the parties to the conflict, justification or, on the contrary, a decisive condemnation of terror. However, Arambur manages to walk a fine line and maintain a balance, happily escaping the temptation of publicistic primitivization. Basque terrorists in his interpretation are completely devoid of romantic flair and look, to put it mildly, unpleasant. However, the state, which opposes the Basque terror, does not arouse much sympathy for the writer: subjecting people suspected of having links with ETA to torture, and their relatives - to humiliation, it not only does not contribute to the resolution of the conflict, but, on the contrary, spins the flywheel of enmity.
In this situation - at first glance it is completely stalemate - the only way out for Aramburu is the rejection of any broadcast generalizations and the slow, laborious, sometimes painful restoration of severed personal ties - friendly, neighborly, simply human. Forgiveness is not collective, but individual - and the same piece, singular acceptance of responsibility and admission of guilt. That is why in the seven-hundred-page densely populated novel there is, in fact, not a single truly negative character - each of the heroes remains a complex, absolutely living and multidimensional figure, with his own voice, his own weaknesses and his own righteousness.
It is this ethical ambiguity, this salutary and, obviously, hard-won refusal of simplification that turns Fernando Arambura's Motherland - into a novel, as already mentioned, emphasized local, inseparable from a specific place and time - into a high tragedy in the spirit of antiquity. And at the same time - into an ideal novel about a social split and its overcoming.
This article was sponsored by Giang Pham
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