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A compact, emotionally gripping literary novel from the author of Patria that blends a real-life tragedy with an intimate psychological portrayal of its aftermath.
International bestseller Fernando Aramburu—winner of Spain’s National Prize for Narrative, the Strega Europeo, and the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Prize—returns with his most intimate and emotionally gripping novel yet. With The Child, Aramburu turns from the broad canvas of history to the private shadows of a single Basque family shaken by an unspeakable tragedy.
Based on a real-life school explosion near Bilbao that killed fifty children in 1980, The Child follows one family—parents, grandparents, and the lost boy of the novel’s title—through the long, painful arc of grief. Aramburu’s gift lies in his ability to portray ordinary people with extraordinary humanity: small gestures, fleeting thoughts, contradictory impulses, the quiet heroism of resilience. His prose is unadorned, piercing, and all the more powerful for its restraint. The grandfather who refuses to believe the boy is gone; the parents determined to “be strong;” the town that both remembers and forgets—each is rendered with exacting truth and tenderness in careful, and caring, prose.
Spanish readers have described The Child as “heart-breaking and unforgettable,” and “Aramburu at his most intimate.” With echoes of Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, The Child is a novel about trauma and its wake, about tight-knit communities, about the long shadow of loss, and about the possibility of healing. It is perfect for readers of emotionally driven, character-centered fiction that explores how ordinary families survive the unimaginable.
“The Child is a luminous novel about darkness.”—Lecturas Sumergidas
“Aramburu puts himself to the test by seeking a balance between what he must tell, and how he must tell it, making reading him an exercise in recognition that moves, teaches, and captivates. Once again, Aramburu finds the right words for something that is so very difficult to name.”—El Independiente
“Aramburu delves with depth, elegance and unsentimental emotion into the narration of the pain and the consequences of the tragic death of a group of children in a community… He has achieved one of his most rounded, beautiful and convincing novels, a prodigy of social immersion, of penetration into the innerworkings of family and, with it, of universal empathy.”—El Mundo
“It is incredibly difficult to write a novel about the devastated world left behind by a dead son without elegiac tones, but Aramburu has managed to do so.”—Babelia
“The Child draws a picture, as moving as it is disturbing, of the fragility of human nature.”—El Cultural
“With Aramburu there is only one option: to surrender to his rhythm and his sacred commitment to the word.”—La Razón
“Raw, emotional and deeply respectful.”—Esquire
“A masterful example of the genius that Aramburu is.”—Onda Cero
“Fernando Aramburu has become one of the most esteemed writers in Spanish literature.”—La Vanguardia
“What a beautiful and moving novel. It is read with feverish distress.”—RNE
“The Child is a book anchored in warm orality, narrating the meaninglessness of lives that were broken from one moment to the next and filled by an unbearable emptiness.”—La Vanguardia
“Aramburu narrates this story masterfully…the ultimate condition of which is piety, of not remaining aloof from the lives he tells.”—Abc Cultural