
Nevada Days
Bernardo Atxaga(Author)
MacLehose Press
Published on 29. June 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-0-85705-536-1 (ISBN)
Description
Nevada Days is a fictionalised account of Atxaga's nine months' stay as writer-in-residence at the Centre for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada. He is accompanied by his wife, Angela, who is also doing research there, and by their two daughters. During their first few weeks, the family encounter a strange mapache (racoon), which is always staring at them from the garden, a flight of helicopters immediately overhead, a black widow spider, a warning about bears, a party of prisoners in the desert, a lake that is somehow far too calm and too blue, and, not long into their stay, the kidnap and murder of a young girl living in the house right next door.
Atxaga tells us about all these strange encounters, and about his colleagues at the university, about the trips the family make to California and across the Sierra Nevada and to Lake Tahoe, but this narrative is also interspersed with accounts of his dreams, with stories from his past.
Nevada Days seductively weaves together past and present, and shows us how deeply marked we are by experience and history and relationships, however fleeting or enduring, and reminds us what a very strange thing life is.
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
Atxaga tells us about all these strange encounters, and about his colleagues at the university, about the trips the family make to California and across the Sierra Nevada and to Lake Tahoe, but this narrative is also interspersed with accounts of his dreams, with stories from his past.
Nevada Days seductively weaves together past and present, and shows us how deeply marked we are by experience and history and relationships, however fleeting or enduring, and reminds us what a very strange thing life is.
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
Reviews / Votes
A brilliantly inventive writer. -- A.S. Byatt Not just a Basque novelist but the Basque novelist. -- Michael Eaude * Guardian. * Atxaga knows how to entertain, to move and to give the autobiography all the charm of fiction. -- J.A. Masoliver Rodenas * La Vanguardia. * A poetic and rhythmic accumulation of stories and reflections, experiences and emotions. -- Antonio Lozano * Que Leer. * A hybrid endeavour, bringing together journalistic excerpts, letters, diary entries, telephone conversations, memories, surreal night-time ponderings and dreams . . . [by] the most important Basque writer of his generation -- Amaia Gabantxo * Times Literary Supplement *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Quercus Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 138 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
354 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85705-536-1 (9780857055361)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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Persons
Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including Obabakoak (1992), The Accordionist's Son (2007) and Nevada Days (2017), have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. In 2019 he was awarded the National Prize for Spanish Letters. His works have been translated into thirty-two languages.