Burning Bones

Miren Agur Meabe is one of Basque literature’s leading contemporary writers and the winner of several national awards. She is the only writer to win Spain’s national poetry prize in the Basque language.

In a series of short poetic narratives Burning Bones finds the writer on a remarkable journey of imagination, discovery and emotion.

We watch the gardener gather kindling to prepare a bonfire. ‘So many branches,’ Itell Gwen. ‘They look like a pile of bones... I have a feeling that’s what I’m doing too, carrying a bundle of bones from place to place. And I don’t just mean the bones in my body.’

From a flooded river stranding a dolphin on a sandbank to a sailor afraid to venture onto land while a first kiss is cut tragically short Meabe plays with the expectations and form of stories while offering a rhapsody of reflection and reinvention.

‘Miren Agur Meabe’s poetic language shades and heightens the pulse of her writing, [adding] sensuality to the wound she writes of. Her way of looking elevates her raw, sincere voice to higher ground...’ – Harkaitz Cano

Expertly translated into English by Amaia Gabantxo – arguably the most prestigious contemporary Basque to English translator – Hezurren Erretura [Burning Bones] is a companion piece to Miren Agur Meabe’s A Glass Eye, a collection of short stories that complement the universe of Meabe’s novel about absence as an engine for creation, about what we make out of the things we lose--her eye, in the author’s case, or love, or the innocence of youth.

Burning Bones takes us through the universe of the character at the heart of A Glass Eye, a fictional version of Meabe: her childhood, teenage years and adulthood, the experiences that marked her. Whereas A Glass Eye is a novel, Burning Bones is a collection of brief narratives. This two pieces are complemented by a third one that Miren Agur Meabe published in 2020 to complete what she considers a triptych, a poetry collection called Nola Gorde Errautsa Kolkoan [Holding Ashes in the Heart]. In this triptych, the author experiments with the possibilities of form and genre, inviting readers into an imperfect woman’s journey into artisthood.