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hurrengoa

LAGUN IZOZTUA

Joseba Sarrionandia · Elkar

Goio Ugarte has lived in the English speaking town of Bluefields on the atlantic coast of Nicaragua for quite some time now. Even though he is an illegal resident, he has been taken under the wing by the locals due to his work as a male nurse. One day, however, he "freezes" ; he recognises nobody, he doesn't speak, he remembers nothing, he doesn't react to anything. The "postmistress" Maribel, so called because she delivers and collects letters and parcels to and from political refugees, comes to help him. She can't find a suitable phsyciatrist for Goio in Managua, so she thinks of taking him to Ecuador. Andoni, another refugee and childhood friend of Goio's, lives there and Maribel feels that a friendly atmosphere will help him recover.
That's how the book starts, but from there on, three different stories are developed in parallel and counterpoint. One of the threads, the one that carries on directly from the start to be more precise, follows on with the story of Goio's sickness and is told by Maribel in the present tense and in the first person. In the second thread the past is used by Andoni Martinez to talk about the school year when he was 14. Andoni, from Bilbo, was sent to the Jesuit boarding school at Kalaportu where he would meet Goio, he being from Kalaportu. This chapter has all the ingredients of a classical initiation-novel; they discover, one by one, the secrets necessary to enter the world of grown ups. They would see things differently after that. The third and final thread, told in the future tense by one who knows all, tells us of a journey by Goio who has now been healed. He accompanies a scientific expadition to the North Pole.

hurrengoa

SEPTENTRIO

Aurelia Arkotxa · Alberdania

In this book, before she heads off to the newly discovered lands in the West, the authouress follows Marco Polo and Mandeville's footsteps throughout the East, drawing up a phantasmagoric map as she goes along. Afterwards, autobiographically, she returns to the North West, back to the new lands, back to the tale of those who lived out their dreams. Yet it's always from the perspective of the search for the world and Tierra Incognita. She follows the trail of the Basques who went to Ternua and sketches the wish-trail they left behind them. In order to do so, the book opens onto the endless sea; "The ship slowly but surely disappears into the distance, leaving a lonley empty sea,".