Fernando Aramburu: »Fabula«

Twenty-year-olds Asier and Joseba settle on a chicken farm in the south of France to be trained by the Basque terrorist group ETA. This proves difficult because ETA disbands shortly afterwards. So what. Asier and Joseba will manage. They'll carry on. With their means. And meet María Cristina, a young communist ... With Fabula, the Spaniard Fernando Aramburu - who has lived in Hanover for over 30 years - returns to the thematic world of his novel Patria, which made him famous worldwide. But he does so entirely in the spirit of the famous Marx quote, according to which "all great world-historical facts and people happen twice, so to speak: once as a tragedy, the other time as a farce." Patria, a "work of tremendous force" (ZEIT), was the tragedy. Fabula is the farce, a deadly comic grotesque. SZ editor Karin Janker, Spain correspondent until 2023, moderates.