A Basque-born novelist now living in Germany, Aramburu unfolds the consequences of the Basque insurgency while asking us to ponder larger issues of violence, friendship, and moral choice ... Punch-in-the-face powerful with a bittersweet ending; this leading Spanish novelist's first English-language outing is a masterpiece.

In his new novel, Homeland, Fernando Aramburu—a celebrated and supremely talented Spanish writer who lives in Germany—conjures a grim and claustrophobic image of the years when ETA held sway in the northern region known as 'el Pais Vasco,' the Basque Country ... complex and challenging ... Keeping straight all the names and central relationships—as well as a galaxy of supporting characters—can be a difficult task made more challenging by Aramburu’s sometimes maddeningly nonlinear storytelling style. I found myself having to reread several early chapters, and finally succumbed to building a chart of the dramatis personae ... Homeland is no beach read. But once I caught the rhythm, I came to think of it as exhibiting a kind of sophisticated tidal pattern, with each ebb and flow...leaving behind new clues in the sand.

Fernando Aramburu’s gift lies in the links between action and reaction ... while the book overflows with tight, cinematic scenes, it remains static, almost dull. It reads like a long catalog of victimhood, sparing none of its characters. Glimpses into the origins of their friendships, or the nature of their filial piety or their love, are few and far between ... Homeland oscillates between a telenovela without intrigue and Dostoyevsky without moral inquiry ... the lackluster prose, while much clumsier and more confusing than the original Spanish, suits the desultory social landscape it describes ... Homeland is indeed less interesting than it could have been with more balance and more motion in any direction.

...a brutal, austere novel, broad in psychological and moral scope ... The harshness and rancorous small-town setting are reminiscent, I just wish that Alfred MacAdam’s translation were half as agile as Ann Goldstein’s for the Ferrante novels. His English is jammed with cloddish phrases that no native speaker would ever use...It doesn’t help that Aramburu’s prose slips and slides between the past and present tense as well as the third and first person, so that you are never quite sure who the narrative voice belongs to ... But Aramburu is a captivating writer despite his tics. Few books make me cry these days but by the final page I found my eyes prickling with tears. By examining his society in such close detail, Aramburu encourages us to reflect on the bitter divisions in our own world and the opportunities we have for reconciliation. The people we learn most about in Homeland are ourselves.

In general, Aramburu’s manipulation of his village folk, his frequent use of such expressions as 'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph' or 'The guy with the big balls,' or the many, many words in Basque create a rather old-world, even patronizing tone. Sometimes it seems that, rather than local circumstances, it is the author who is imprisoning the characters, obliging them to behave blindly at first, then with great enlightenment, exactly as suits the book’s development. The impression is not helped by Alfred MacAdam’s translation, which veers wildly between seeking idiomatic intensity in an American vernacular...to a slavish tracking of Spanish syntax ... With page after page of this, all distinction between the way the various characters think and speak is blurred, clunky, and quaint, as if they were migrants who had learned a few English phrases but were otherwise struggling to express themselves ... But while few would hesitate to condemn ETA’s strategy of terror, it is curious that nothing is said about the issue of a community losing control of its 'homeland' or seeing it subsumed in a larger dominant culture ... Toward the end of Homeland, on the contrary, it simply seems there is no Basque problem at all, and very likely never was. The entire struggle was an ugly error, promoted only by the evil and the ingenuous, aligned with bigotry and superstition ... Perhaps in the original Spanish, for readers who are more aware of the events Aramburu talks about and who experience his style differently, this is not the case.

Aramburu’s plot is simple but unfolds in a somewhat complicated fashion, with flashbacks and multiple points of view. The psychological complexity of his characters, especially the women, creates dramatic intensity. One of the first literary novels to directly address the ongoing consequences of Basque sectarian violence, this is a blockbuster in Spain.

... complex ... Aramburu recounts the lives of ordinary people shattered by events that are ongoing in Spain today even years after ETA has suspended its armed campaign; the reader needs no background in that tangled history to understand that basic, terrible truth. A humane, memorable work of literature.

The cast is sprawling—with both matriarchs, husbands, five children, spouses, grandchildren—but each’s story is realized masterfully, as the characters look to escape violence however they can, be it exile, alcohol, or love. Aramburu’s remarkable novel is an honest and empathetic portrait of suffering and forgiveness, home and family.