The Lone Woman - Hardcover

Atxaga, Bernardo

3.35

425 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860464211 ISBN 13: 9781860464218

Publisher: The Harvill Press, 1999

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Irene is thirty-seven years old and just out of prison after a four-year sentence for terrorist involvement. On her first night of freedom, she wanders from bar to bar, picks up a stranger, and spends the night with him in a hotel. He treats her badly; she attacks him and escapes. She decides to return to her native Bilbao, and while waiting at the bus stop in Barcelona, she is approached by a man she believes to be a plainclothes policeman. By attaching herself to two nuns, she manages to board the bus without him, and her journey begins.Other passengers on the bus include another plainclothes policeman, who is joined by the first farther down the line. Conversations strike up, and there begins an intricate game of hide-and-seek between strangers as they open up a little, make advances and diversions, and sidestep nimbly. As the bus continues across Spain and the travelers come increasingly into focus, Atxaga builds up tensions that can be resolved only after their arrival in Bilbao.

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From the Back Cover:

After four years in a Barcelona jail, the woman was free to go home, back to the Basque country, to Bilbao. But she had nothing to go back to - her lover was dead, her husband divorced, her family had disowned her, she had no children. Back to nursing? She was burnt out. Back to her comrades in the Organization? No, they thought she had betrayed them. All that she carried with her was a suitcase with a few treasured books, a pack or two of smokes, and memories. But no plans: the horizon was empty, featureless. On the coach carrying her back to Bilbao she kept herself to herself, with only a few words to the large lady in the next seat, a couple of nuns, and two men, a smooth talker in a red tie and a tough who showed a little too much interest in her. It was as though she had no need to hide from them that she was fresh out of prison, an amnestied terrorist, her reputation compromised.

The lone woman, like the protagonist of Bernardo Atxaga's previous novel The Lone Man, is tracked, on the run; but clearly she lives under a quite different star. In the subtle, complex emotions that haunt her she gives the reader a deep insight into the prevailing anxieties of our day.

About the Author:

Bernardo Atxaga, a Basque, was born in 1951. He published his first work at the age of twenty in an anthology of Basque writers. He has written plays, children's books, radio scripts and novels, including Obabakoak, which has been published in fourteen languages including English, and won several prizes. His last novel, The Lone Man, was described by Peter Millar in The Times as "a spellbinding, sympathetic odyssey into the mind of a former terrorist".

Margaret Jull Costa translated Obabakoak and The Lone Man. She is also translator of works by Javier Mar�as (including A Heart so White which won the Dublin International Impac Award), Carmen Mart�n Gaite and Arturo P�rez-Reverte. Her translation of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet made her joint-winner of the Portuguese translation prize.

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