The Accordionist's Son

“A gorgeous and ambitious story about the Basque land and language.”

David Imaz, the protagonist in The Accordionist’s Son, was raised in the village of Obaba and is now living in exile on a ranch in California. Nearing fifty and in failing health, he decides to write the story of his youth, a narrative that takes the reader from 1936 to 1999. David’s pastoral childhood in Obaba is ruptured when, as a teenager forced to learn the accordion (like his father), he finds a letter implicating his father in fascist activities during the Spanish Civil War, including the execution of local republican sympathizers. This letter leads to other discoveries—like the fact that David’s uncle opposed his father’s activities—and Obaba’s history slowly cracks open to reveal to David the political tensions still raw beneath the surface, and the long shadow cast by the war. With The Accordionist’s Son, Atxaga delivers a politically charged and deeply personal novel —It is his finest work to date.

“The Accordionist’s Son at first beguiles us with its leisurely flow like a late summer river, but it is a dark river with streaks of blood seeping from the muddy banks of the past. The undercurrents of class divisions, very personal politics and the sins of the fathers pull us deeper. It is a disturbing story about good and evil embedded in the struggle to save a language and culture, a struggle that metamorphoses into terrorism.”

“A fresh voice in Basque and Spanish literature…The Accordionist’s Son, first published in the Basque language in 2003, is [Atxaga’s] most accomplished novel.”

“Each character is a world, a story marvelously integrated into the whole… A master storyteller has become a fabulous chronicler of reality. . . The Accordionist’s Son charms and moves us.”

“The first great Basque novel.”

One of the “21 top writers for the 21st century.”