Nunca serás un verdadero Gondra (You’ll never be a true Gondra)
by Borja Ortiz de Gondra
Description
Borja works as a translator for an international organization in New York, where he lives with his partner, John. One night, he receives a phone call from his cousin, who informs him that his brother has just died and that the cousin has something to give him. Many years earlier, in the 1990s, Borja left the Basque Country and cut his ties with a family and a land that were poisoned by hatred and incomprehension. In the United States he became a different person, someone who had torn up his roots and buried his past in order to embrace a present in which he could live, freely, in another language. But one phone call can be enough to demolish the highest wall. Now, this ill-fated son of a family that has fallen on hard times finds he is the sole heir of the dilapidated mansion that looks out over the sea from its vantage point at the top of the town of Algorta. Only he can open the door and decide what to do with so many years of pain and silence. But healing the wounds is not easy and writing a book about the past may only serve to make them deeper.
Ortiz de Gondra has written a perceptive exploration of identity, memory and the possibility of shaping one’s own destiny beyond any boundaries that our family and our homeland may impose on us.
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Endorsements
“Family secrets and an old hatred that is renewed with each generation. This novel talks of violence with an intimacy that at once fascinates and appals, raising conflict to the level of classical tragedy. That is where the dark heart of human beings can be found. But it is also where hope lies”. - ROSA MONTERO
“There is much to admire in this book: the brilliant construction of one novel within another, the psychological sophistication of the narrator, and the thrilling adventures of a man who, despite the distances involved, is unable to resist the call to return to his roots, to the complicated family past and to his homeland, the Basque Country, a place that was, for a long time, the scene of bloody events.” - FERNANDO ARAMBURU, author of Homeland
“(...) I read almost without pausing for breath, and was blown away by the desolation that impregnates a text whose plot I was already largely familiar with. Nothing of the sort had ever happened to me before. (...) I don’t know if Borja Ortiz de Gondra will continue to dissect this story in other novels, other plays that he might writ in the future, but I’m certain that, if he does, I will continue to read them so that I can be astonished by his talent and his audacity.”- ALMUDENA GRANDES, El País
“The family saga of the Gondras and the Arsuagas is the story of Basque society of recent years. The author weaves a moving account of the impossibility of constructing an identity that ignores family traumas and one’s roots”. - GABRIELA YBARRA
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Author Biography
Borja Ortiz de Gondra (Bilbao, 1965) holds degrees in Law, Theatre and Translation. During his extensive career as a playwright he has won the Calderón de la Barca Prize, the Lope de Vega Prize and the Max Award for Best Theatre Writing for works that have been performed in Spain, Argentina, France, Mexico and Romania and have been translated into numerous languages (Duda razonable and Memento mori). More recently he has explored the possibilities of family auto-fiction in the theatre in: Los Gondra (The Gondras: a Basque story) and Los otros Gondra (The other Gondras: a Basque tale). As a translator, he has worked for international organizations and has made English and French literature available to Spanish readers. He has lived in Paris and Geneva, and currently divides his time between New York and Madrid. Nunca serás un verdadero
Gondra is his first novel.
Books From Spain
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View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher/Imprint Penguin Random House / Literatura Random House
- Orginal LanguageSpanish
- ISBN/Identifier 9788439737988
- Publication Country or regionSpain
- FormatPaperback
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language AuthorsSpanish
- Copyright Year2021
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