One of only a hundred or so books originally written in the Basque language during the last four centuries,Obabakoakis a shimmering, mercurial novel about life in Obaba, a remote, exotic, Basque village.

Obaba is peopled with innocents and intellectuals, shepherds and schoolchildren, whilst everyone from a lovelorn schoolmistress to a cultured but self-hating dwarf wanders across the page.

Obabakoakis a dazzling collage of stories, town gossip, diary excerpts and literary theory, all held together by Atxaga's distinctive and tenderly ironic voice.

Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, includingThe Accordionist's SonandSeven Houses in France, have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages.

A sprawling carnivalesque set in an eccentric village, this is a wildly unusual novel, originally written in Basque, from one of the most exciting talents in contemporary European literature.