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WORK TITLE: Twist
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 8/4/1975
WEBSITE: http://www.harkaitzcano.com/
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COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Spanish
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born August 4, 1975, in Lasarte, Spain.
EDUCATION:University of the Basque Country, law degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and translator. Writes scripts for radio, television, and comedy shows. Has also appeared in artistic performances.
WRITINGS
Has translated works by Allan Ginsberg, Hanif Kureish, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath into Basque.
SIDELIGHTS
Harkaitz Cano is a Basque writer and translator. He has written scripts for comedy shows, radio, and television and has also appeared in artistic performances. Cano has translated works by authors, including Allan Ginsberg, Hanif Kureish, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath into the Basque language. He has released collections of poetry, novels, and collections of short stories in Spanish, English, and Basque. In an interview with Nathalie Van Meurs, contributor to the Poetry International Web website, Cano discussed the Basque language and writing in Basque. He stated: “Basque is not that isolated; many words come from their Latin roots. Basque’s been in touch with many other languages and that implies some give and take: some words in Spanish come from Basque, and the Basque word to say telephone can be understood by anyone: ‘telefonoa’. On the other hand, Basque is the perfect language to fiction, starting from its very beginning: its origin is unknown. You can make up whatever you want. … Our literature is young, active, and vivid.”
Blade of Light
In 2010, Blade of Light was published. The volume is the first of Cabo’s to be released in English. It was translated by Amaia Gabantxo.
In the book, Cano imagines an alternate version of modern history, in which the Axis powers were victorious during World War II. The Nazi party rules all of Europe. Hitler makes plans to increase his territory by occupying Manhattan and going on to conquer the United States. He travels to New York to begin strategizing. On the ship on which he is traveling is Charlie Chaplin, the celebrated comedic actor. Chaplin has been brutally punished for creating and appearing in the satirical film, The Great Dictator. Another narrative thread follows Olivier Legrand, a Frenchman who hid inside the Statue of Liberty as it was being sent to the U.S. Chaplin and Legrand eventually meet, and Legrand agrees to hide Chaplin from his torturers.
Twist
Twist: Seres intermitentes was originally published in Spanish in 2013. Its English translation, Twist, was released in 2018. It tells the story of Diego Lazkano, who lives in the Basque Country of Spain after Franco has died. ETA, a militant political group, has launched a campaign of violence, demanding sovereignty and separation from Spain. Two of Diego’s friends have joined the group. He makes the difficult decision to report them to the Guardia Civil, or national police force. Diego is deeply ambivalent about his actions. Meanwhile, he interacts with Gloria, his girlfriend, and considers lofty topics, such as love, philosophy, and art. Other characters comment on the concept of truth.
A Kirkus Reviews critic described Twist as a “sometimes-labored, sometimes-lumbering tale.” The critic remarked: “In the end, Cano’s book is a meditation on secrets and historical truth.” The same critic also called the volume “a slow but meaningful examination of guilt and expiation.” In a lengthy assessment of the novel on the Asymptote website, Sam Carter suggested: “Twist … impressively ties together all of the well-known story types while adding a twist to each one: the search for one’s father, the courtroom drama, the affair between an older man and younger woman, and the writer struggling with finding and exploiting sources of information. Such complication ultimately makes a strong case for the continuing relevance of the novel as a form, given that it is one of the few that can effortlessly encompass so much.” Carter added: “If … the most famous name in Basque literature remains Bernardo Atxaga, the appearance of Cano’s work is a welcome addition not only because it expands the range of work but also because it reminds us of the tremendous productivity and diversity of a language that often gets comparatively little attention.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2018, review of Twist.
ONLINE
Asymptote, https://www.asymptotejournal.com/ (April 5, 2018), Sam Carter, review of Twist.
Harkaitz Cano website, http://www.harkaitzcano.com/ (July 2, 2018).
The writer
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HARKAITZ CANO (Lasarte, 1975) holds a degree in law from the University of the Basque Country. He usually works as radio, television and comic scriptwriter, and has translated into Basque works by Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Hanif Kureish and Allen Ginsberg. He has published books of poetry (Norbait dabil sute-eskaileran, 2001; Compro oro, 2011), collections of short stories (Neguko zirkua, 2005, Spanish Critics Prize; Beti oporretan, 2015), and the novels Beluna jazz (1996), Pasaia blues (1999), Belarraren ahoa (2006; trans. Blade of Light, UNR, 2010), and Twist (2011; Spanish Critics Prize, Euskadi Prize). Cano has taken part in a number of performances combining literature with music and other arts. His books have been published into a dozen languages, including English, German and Russian.
QUOTED: "Basque is not that isolated; many words come from their Latin roots. Basque's been in touch with many other languages and that implies some give and take: some words in Spanish come from Basque, and the Basque word to say telephone can be understood by anyone: 'telefonoa'. On the other hand, Basque is the perfect language to fiction, starting from its very beginning: its origin is unknown. You can make up whatever you want. ... Our literature is young, active, and vivid."
NATHALIE VAN MEURS INTERVIEWS HARKAITZ CANO
Harkaitz Cano, Spain, Basque, poetry
© Sushi Maky.
Thursday 21 May 2015
The Basque poet Harkaitz Cano will be a featured guest at the 46th Poetry International Festival. In addition to reading his poetry during various programs, he also will present a Craft Talk, which will take place on last day of the festival, Saturday, 13 June. Here, Poetry International intern Nathalie van Meurs asks Cano about how the Basque language and identity shape his work, and to give us a preview of his Craft Talk.
1. Do you think the Basque language provides citizens of the Basque Country with a different sense of identity than, for example, a Spanish or a French identity? And how does the fact that Basque is sometimes seen as a 'made up language' add to this?
Orson Welles shot a documentary in the Basque Country many years ago, and he came to the conclusion that he didn't know who the hell the Basques were, but he was quite sure that they were neither Spanish nor French. Basque language has a small world of its own: a bunch of publishers, public TV and radio stations, a daily newspaper, magazines and a very active and cutting edge web environment. In addition to that, Basque language is only an organic tool with no particular mysticism attached to it; a language, among many others, with the particularity of having –being generous– only a million speakers. We're few, yes, but more than in Iceland, for instance, where they have an amazing music and literary scene with only 300.000 people… Not having our own state somehow exaggerates the perception of our smallness in the world.
All languages are 'made up languages', only that Basque is made up more recently than others. Besides, a language is a living organism that changes every day.
2. Basque is seen as an isolated language that, if associated with other languages, is most similar to Aquitaine, which is a 'dead language'. How does this enrich or limit the role of language in the quest for identity-searching of a people, and how does this enrich or limit your writing (poetry)?
Basque is not that isolated; many words come from their Latin roots. Basque's been in touch with many other languages and that implies some give and take: some words in Spanish come from Basque, and the Basque word to say telephone can be understood by anyone: 'telefonoa'. On the other hand, Basque is the perfect language to fiction, starting from its very beginning: its origin is unknown. You can make up whatever you want . . . We do have some playful theories about it. Does it come from the Caucasus? Amazigh roots, maybe? Was it Adam and Eve´s language? Make your choice, nobody can prove it, so . . . Our language may be an ancient one, but I'm not proud of that, I would prefer to think that our literature is young, active and vivid, framed in a flourishing culture. A Basque writer sometimes feels that he's the first one walking on fresh snow. It may be harder to step on, but the fact that you're creating, with your own footprints, your path and tradition, can be extremely exciting too.
3. At the Poetry International Festival you will give a Craft Talk. Can you say something about the topic(s) that you will talk about and why they are relevant in contemporary society?
The main idea is that humour and irony are essential to ruffle some feathers, as well as the interaction among different art disciplines. One of my main concerns with social networks, Twitter, etc., is that everybody wants to be a writer, but no one wants to be a reader anymore. In this context, how can a poet contribute to society? Perhaps we should try to restore the real meaning of some worn-out words, adding unexpected nuances and trying to trigger uneasy feelings; making the reader doubt his or her convictions. Easy to say, but . . .
4. How does the topic of your Craft Talk influence your own poetry and/or artwork?
I cannot conceive poetry without this connection to day-to-day life. I believe that art can achieve a modest change sometimes or, in the best case, even catharsis. As Catalan poet Joan Margarit once said: a good poem is a sort of black box. Once you go through this box, you should notice something slightly changed while you were in, even though you may not be able to utterly grasp the ultimate reason of this transformation.
Read more about Cano and selections from his poetry here. And don't miss your chance to see him in person at the 46th Poetry International Festival. His Craft Talk will take place on Saturday, 13 June, 2015, at 16:30 in the Small Auditorium of the Rotterdam Schouwburg.
© Nathalie van Meurs
QUOTED: "sometimes-labored, sometimes-lumbering tale."
"In the end, Cano's book is a meditation on secrets and historical truth."
"a slow but meaningful examination of guilt and expiation."
Cano, Harkaitz: TWIST
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Cano, Harkaitz TWIST Archipelago (Adult Fiction) $20.00 3, 6 ISBN: 978-09146718-2-4
Of political terror and its consequences in the Basque country of northern Spain.
Readers of a certain age may remember that, a generation or two ago, Basque nationalists were busy setting bombs in Spanish venues in an effort to gain independence. It didn't work. Readers of any age will want to have at least some grounding in the history of the paramilitary group ETA and post-Franco Spain to appreciate the nuances of Basque author Cano's sometimes-labored, sometimes-lumbering tale, which centers on a compatriot who, having given up two separatist friends to the Guardia Civil, now spends the next few hundred pages pondering what he's done and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Diego Lazkano isn't necessarily a bad guy, but in the dirty war of political oppression and assassination in which he's implicated, everything in his life hinges on his betrayal: He wants to talk of art and philosophy, to be in love, but the world spins away from him as the reckoning draws nearer. "The dead; they are many and always grateful for a bit of entertainment," he avers, having added to their number. His lover, Gloria, the daughter of an ardent, murderous fascist, meanwhile retreats from politics into art while nursing a deep well of anger, though her theatrical inquiry into whether torture can be "sublimated through art" speaks directly to Diego's crime. In the end, Cano's book is a meditation on secrets and historical truth, no small issue in a Spain that is still dealing with the Civil War of the 1930s. That truth will out, as a Guardia Civil officer relates, only when the perpetrators speak up: "They say that truth always ends up coming out, and that, generally, it does so...not because of the arduous research of the person who's been digging after it, but because the person in possession of the secret no longer wants to be its keeper."
Camus meets Hamlet: a slow but meaningful examination of guilt and expiation.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Cano, Harkaitz: TWIST." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375211/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=06273025. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375211
QUOTED: "Twist ... impressively ties together all of the well-known story types while adding a twist to each one: the search for one’s father, the courtroom drama, the affair between an older man and younger woman, and the writer struggling with finding and exploiting sources of information. Such complication ultimately makes a strong case for the continuing relevance of the novel as a form, given that it is one of the few that can effortlessly encompass so much."
"If ... the most famous name in Basque literature remains Bernardo Atxaga, the appearance of Cano’s work is a welcome addition not only because it expands the range of work but also because it reminds us of the tremendous productivity and diversity of a language that often gets comparatively little attention."
In Review: Twist by Harkaitz Cano
April 5, 2018 | in Reviews | by Sam Carter
Let’s hope that translation remains not so much a means of preservation but rather the best way for one tool to sharpen another.
Harkaitz Cano’s Twist, recently released by Archipelago Books in Amaia Gabantxo’s translation from the Basque, both shimmies and shimmers on various levels, each of which exhibits its own twist. Like the famous Chubby Checker song, which was itself a cover or translation of sorts, this novel offers a new version of events that rocked the Basque world in the convulsive 1980s—a period when ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), an armed separatist group promoting the independence of the Basque nation, was not only active but also actively pursued by the GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación), which were illegal, government-sponsored death squads dedicated to destroying ETA and its influence in the region.
Officially disarmed in 2017, ETA used as its symbol a snake enveloping an axe, with the former representing politics and the latter armed struggle. Twisted around each other to suggest their inseparability, it is also ultimately a reminder that what lies at the heart of the Basque conflict is precisely the idea of separation: there is a nation that wishes to separate itself from the Spanish state; a Basque nation already separated by the French-Spanish border; and a broad separatist movement that includes those who wish to distance themselves from forms of violence like that carried out by ETA.
Focusing on a particular period to narrate part of the region’s broader history, Cano takes up the well-known case of Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala, two ETA militants who were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by GAL operatives in 1983. In 1982, they had attempted to rob a bank with toy guns since their real ones had yet to arrive, and Twist imitates that gesture by creating fictional stand-ins for these figures. Soto and Zeberio ultimately face the same fate as their real-life counterparts, but they also find a way to live on through their friend Diego Lazkano, whose struggle with the deaths of his two comrades and his subsequent career as a writer form the narrative center of this expansive, incisive novel.
As it stretches across decades, party lines, and, briefly, the Atlantic Ocean, Twist traces both the immediate aftershocks of the disappearance of Soto and Zeberio and the echoes of this disturbing episode that never fully fade. It’s a novel concerned above all with braiding—or twisting—together storylines from many sides, including those of journalists, playwrights, parents, militants, and military figures. The youthful idealism of Soto, Zeberio, and Lazkano appears alongside the jaded reflections and questionable justifications of those who wronged them, creating a dissonant yet captivating polyphony.
Part of what makes the novel so compelling is the way it embeds the well-known act of violence—the disappearance of the two young men—within a broader context marked by many smaller aggressions. Of course, some of these are the result of misguided attempts to cope with the effects of that trauma, but they also demonstrate how it’s often a question of scale instead of clear separation. The one, in other words, is simply a slight twist on the other, as fathers exhibit cruelty towards their children and husbands behave badly away from their wives.
Like most fictional works so firmly rooted in the historical, Twist makes its distinctive contributions by exploring what might have never been recorded, by considering what might have escaped documentation or even recollection. One refrain—“He thinks it, but he doesn’t say it”—gets at the heart of this idea of thick description, of creating character through the combination of motivation and interiority. It’s the task of any novelist who confronts his surroundings, but it also has a particular resonance for Cano, who was only eight years old when Lasa and Zabala disappeared. Ten years later, he began studying law, and after his first year at school the bodies of the two young men were finally discovered. In his classes, Cano soon found himself studying the case from a legal point of view and he realized that it was a story “that deserved to be told with the tools of fiction.” Although he considered writing a non-fiction novel in the style of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, it was only many years later that he began composing the decidedly fictional but still historically faithful Twist.
In an interview, Cano has suggested that there are two types of creator: those who simplify and those who create. As he explains, screenwriters often need to be the former, whereas the novel allows you to be both. “My literary genes, my DNA,” he says, “are those of someone who complicates.” It’s on full display in Twist, which impressively ties together all of the well-known story types while adding a twist to each one: the search for one’s father, the courtroom drama, the affair between an older man and younger woman, and the writer struggling with finding and exploiting sources of information. Such complication ultimately makes a strong case for the continuing relevance of the novel as a form, given that it is one of the few that can effortlessly encompass so much.
The title of the novel remains unchanged in the transposition from Basque to English—just as it did when moving from Basque to Spanish in 2013—but everywhere else translator Amaia Gabantxo expertly locates latent rhythms in Cano’s prose and renders a number of different narrative voices. In some instances, it almost seems as if Spanish phrasing creeps in—the English “retook the conversation,” for instance, distinctly resembles the Spanish “retomó la conversación”—but I am tempted to hear it as a way of indicating, even if only inadvertently, the thoroughly multilingual context of the original Basque. That multiplicity is something that Gabantxo and Cano both emphasize in their respective versions, as the former leaves many Spanish phrases untranslated to remind us that although the work hails from Spain it is not necessarily Spanish and as the latter foregrounds questions of translation in the novel itself. One lengthy section, for example, depicts Lazkano’s efforts to translate an early Chekhov play into Basque. Here Cano—who has translated Anne Sexton and others into Basque as well as his own works into Spanish—not only displays a keen understanding of the challenges a translator might face but also performs the admirable feat of finding the perfect source text that will allow his character to continue grappling with his own preoccupations while translating.
If, for English readers, the most famous name in Basque literature remains Bernardo Atxaga, the appearance of Cano’s work is a welcome addition not only because it expands the range of work but also because it reminds us of the tremendous productivity and diversity of a language that often gets comparatively little attention, even in comparison to a close counterpart like Catalan. That’s not to say there aren’t any other recent translations from Basque: Ramon Saizarbitoria’s Martutene, considered to be the best novel ever written in the language, became in available in English in 2016 thanks to Hispabooks. Such a reminder is always timely, since, as Cano explains, “there’s something that English or German writers never ask themselves, and that is whether the tool they use will disappear . . . An English writer never thinks that his language might not exist in one hundred years, but those of us who write in minor languages do.” Let’s hope that translation remains not so much a means of preservation but rather the best way for one tool to sharpen another.
Sam Carter is an Assistant Managing Editor at Asymptote.