The Child
Description
From the author of Homeland, an emotionally gripping novel that blends a real-life event with an intimate portrayal of its aftermath
International bestselling author Aramburu turns from the broad canvas of history to the private shadows of a Basque family shaken by unspeakable tragedy in this compact, intimate novel about trauma and it wake.
Based on a real-life school explosion near Bilbao that killed fifty children in 1980, The Child follows one family-parents, grandparents, and the lost boy of the novel's title-across the long, painful arc of grief.
Aramburu's gift lays in his ability to portray ordinary people with extraordinary humanity: small gestures, fleeting thoughts, contradictory impulses, the quiet heroism of resilience. The grandfather who refuses to believe the boy is gone; the parents determined to "be strong"; the town that both remembers and forgets-each is rendered with exacting truth and tenderness, in unadorned, piercing prose.
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Fernando Aramburu is the internationally celebrated author of thirteen novels and multiple short-story collections. His awards include the Ramón Gómez de la Serna Prize, the Euskadi Prize, the Dulce Chacón Prize, the Mario Vargas Llosa NH Prize, the Tusquets Novel Prize, the Biblioteca Breve Prize, the 2017 National Prize for Narrative, the Strega Europeo, and the Taobuk Award for Literary Excellence. His novel Patria/Homeland became a European phenomenon. He lives in Germany.