Overview
When Liborio Uribe found that he was going to die, he wanted to once again see a painting by Aurelio Arteta, his wife's father. Liborio had spent his entire life at sea, like his son José, living out unforgettable adventures that fade into obscurity. Years later, faced with the same painting, Liborio's grandson Kirmen, a writer and poet, uses these family stories to write a novel. Bilbao - New York - Bilbao takes place during a flight to New York and tells the story of journeys of three generations of the same family. Through letters, diaries, e-mails, poems, and dictionaries, it creates a mosaic of memories and stories that form an homage to a world that has almost disappeared, as well as a hymn to the continuity of life. A novel, it is also a reflection on the art of writing, and lies between life and fiction.Reviews
"Uribe has succeeded in realizing what is surely an ambition for many writers: a book that combines family, romances, and literature, anchored deeply in a spoken culture but also in bookishness—and all without a single note of self-congratulation." —Times Literary Supplement
"Uribe is an author with numerous preoccupations, politically committed, with a gobal, humanist conscience and a direct and different voice." —PEN America Center on Take My HandAuthor Biography
Kirmen Uribe is an acclaimed writer in the Basque language. His poetry collection, Take My hand, was published in Spanish, French, English, Catalan, and Russian, and won the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.