On a transatlantic flight between Bilbao and New York City, a
fictional version of Kirmen Uribe recalls three generations of family
history--the inspiration for the novel he wants to write--and ponders
how the sea has shaped their stories.
The day he knew he was going to die, our narrator's grandfather took his
daughter-in-law to the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, the de facto capital
of the Basque region of northern Spain, to show her a painting with ties
to their family. Years later, her son Kirmen traces those ties back
through the decades, knotting together moments from early
twentieth-century art history with the stories of his ancestors' fishing
adventures--and tragedies--in the North Atlantic Ocean. Elegant, fluid
storytelling is punctuated by scenes from Kirmen's flight, from security
line to airport bar to jet cabin, and reflections on the creative
writing process.
This original and compelling novel earned debut author Kirmen Uribe the
prestigious National Prize for Literature in Spain in 2009. Exquisitely
translated from Basque to English by Elizabeth Macklin, Bilbao-New
York-Bilbao skillfully captures the intersections of many journeys:
past and present, physical and artistic, complete and still unfolding.
Bilbao-New York-Bilbao is the second book commissioned for the Spatial
Species series, edited by Youmna Chlala and Ken Chen. The series
investigates the ways we activate space through language. In the
tradition of Georges Perec's An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in
Paris, Spatial Species titles are pocket-sized editions, each keenly
focused on place. Instead of tourist spots and public squares, we
encounter unmarked, noncanonical spaces: edges, alleyways, diasporic
traces. Such intimate journeying requires experiments in language and
genre, moving travelogue, fiction, or memoir into something closer to
eating, drinking, and dreaming.
