Translation Rights TQE / Slow Years

Toward the end of the 1970s, the main character of the novel, an eight-year old boy, goes to live with his aunt and uncle in San Sebastián, where he will bear witness to the daily life of his family and their neighborhood. His uncle Vicente has a weak personality and spends his time between the factory and the bar; his aunt Maripuy is a strong woman, the one who runs the family, although she is subjected to the religious and social conventions of the time; his cousin Mari Nieves is boy-crazy; and his cousin Julen, a dark and moody young man, is indoctrinated by the local priest and ends up enrolling in the incipient terrorist organization ETA. Their destiny is shared by many supporting actors of History, trapped between necessity and ignorance, and will end up cracking.

Años lentos alternates the memories of the main character with the writer’s notes and offers a brilliant reflection about how life distills into a novel, how the sentimental memory diverts into collective memory, and meanwhile, the crystal-clear writing allows the reader to see a dark background of guilt in the recent history of the Basque Country.

Fernando Aramburu was born in San Sebastián in 1959. He has a degree in Spanish Language, Literature and Linguistics from Zaragoza University. He currently lives in Germany, where he has worked as a Spanish teacher since 1985. His work has been granted, among others, the Ramón Gómez de la Serna Prize 1997, the Euskadi Prize 2001, and for his short stories Los peces de la amargura (The Fish of Sorrow) the XI Mario Vargas Llosa NH Prize, the Dulce Chacón Prize, and the Prize of the Spanish Language Academy. The movie Bajo las estrellas (Under the Stars) based on Aramburu’s novel El trompetista del utopía (The trumpet player of the Utopia) was awarded a Goya Prize in 2008 for best adapted screenplay by the Spanish Cinematographic Academy.