The powerfully moving international bestseller
'It's been a long time since I've read a book that was so persuasive and moving' Mario Vargas Llosa
The gripping story of two families, of two best friends with divided loyalties.
The Basque Country, Spain, 2011
Miren and Bittori have lived side by side in a small Basque town all their lives. Their husbands play cards together, their children play and eventually go out drinking together. The terrorist threat posed by ETA seems to affect them little.
When Bittori's husband starts receiving threatening letters - demanding money, accusing him of being a police informant - she turns to her friend for help. But Miren's loyalties are torn: her son has just been recruited as a terrorist and to denounce them would be to condemn her own flesh and blood. Tensions rise, relationships fracture, and events move towards a tragic conclusion . . .
'Is Aramburu the Tolstoy of the Basque country, author of a Spanish language War and Peace?' Guardian
'A powerful novel' The Economist

Fernando Aramburu is one of the most outstanding of current writers in Spanish. His numerous novels and books of short stories have been widely praised. But it is his novel Patria (Homeland), acclaimed by critics and a stunning success among readers in Spain and across Europe, that has gained him the widest international readership. Homeland has been awarded numerous prizes, including the National Prize for Literature and the National Critics Prize in Spain and the Strega Europeo Prize and the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa International Literary Prize in Italy.
He currently lives in Germany, where he has worked as a Spanish teacher since 1985. Homeland is his first book to be translated into English.