papers nagore telleria
hurrengoa

ararat mendiaren sumina

yasar kemal · alberdania & elkar - itzul / trans: fernando rey

This book is all of thirty years old. However, the leap is more in references than in time. On Mount Ararat, at four thousand metres altitude. Destiny places a horse at Ahmedi’s door. A horse that returns three times is a gift, forever. It doesn’t matter if the horse belongs to an Ottoman Sultan. From there on it’s all about the people’s hopes and miseries, their dignity and honour. A thousand and one nights more. Homero and the bards’ written tales. Yasar Kemal strikes out with his pen in favour of the Kurds. He’s been imprisoned and tortured because of it. When the German Booksellers awarded him their Peace Prize, they stated the following reasons: the Kurds rebel in defence of their language and literature. The Turkish Government’s answer: if we allow you to use your language and culture in freedom, you’ll soon demand your independence. This is not a history book you have in your hands, it’s the gateway to a culture.

hurrengoa

hamar urte barru

joxe belmonte · erein

Gorbeia 1973. Four young friends. They believe that friendship lasts forever. They promise to meet up ten years later. The photographer acts as a witness. Belmonte takes up the story six years on in this urban novel set in the transition period. The friends have drifted far apart from each other. One of them has changed the rough blue farm trousers for drugs and whores in the seedy area of Bilbao. Another one has swapped his traditional check shirt for the get up of a snitch. Thick woollen socks make way for tattoos of the Basque flag in another’s case. The fourth friend has leapt from the green fields to the psychiatrist’s couch. Newsworthy once more. Just as well there are always somebody else’s girlfriend to shift and the raw crudeness of Bilbao. The idea is good. The photographer gets them all back together at the arranged time. A wordless meeting ten years on. The writer has taken twelve years to round the book off. Then it was awarded Erein Euskadi Kutxa Literature Prize.