What We Tried to Bury Grows Here

Julian has taken on the near impossible task of narrating war and from so many perspectives. I am Basque and reading this novel provides necessary ancestral recognition. It serves as a reminder of the importance of maintaining language, dance, food, etc. and all who fought to avoid our erasure. Zori......more

Very powerful and original work that shows the horrors of war, and of the people who go along with fascism by complying or not making waves so things just "go back to normal" by turning on their fellow citizens. The book manages to do this while also not lionizing those who fight fascism as always h......more

I’ll keep this simple. Buy this book. Read it. That’s all. Especially if your experience of the vital, complex, horrific 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War is limited to Picasso’s painting “Guernica” and Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. You need more. This really is a book everyone should......more

This wholly original novel deserves a wide readership. Twenty chapters, twenty narrators tell their stories--an entire country (Spain) and time (the Spanish Civil War) is packed in here--while we follow Isidro, a Basque soldier, and Mariana, a single mother and political writer, as they fight to kee......more

One of the best novels about the Spanish Civil War. Each chapter is a new narrator who sees or engages with the other narrators. Intricate and moving.......more