RavePublic BooksRamon Saizarbitoria’s Martutene, hailed as the best novel ever written in Basque and now available in English translation, is, among other things, a moving reflection on loyalty and commitment ... His characters live in or around Martutene, a neighborhood southeast of the city of Donostia (San Sebastián), in Basque Country. Born into a culture and language that was once oppressed to near extinction, they have turned their relationship to Basqueness from a fate-imposed loyalty into a life-guiding personal commitment ... Saizarbitoria’s characters are struggling to adapt to a post-ETA world. Even if they disapproved of the violence, which all of them eventually did, it still gave meaning to their lives ... Ironically, the novel itself embodies that same globalizing passage — witness this English translation.
