It is very likely that the worst is not hell and that heaven is not so bad. When in doubt, purgatory may even have a bit of everything for those who do not end up deciding. Something of impossible desires or obsessive fears; of passions without skin with which to enjoy it and of animosities made callus.
Although sometimes it is not necessary to reach purgatory to skirt those notions. Because there may come a time when you are in this world without ever being located or feeling the least bit. And like the fallen angel, nothing worse than a human being disinherited from his piece of paradise...
Under the umbrella of so much literature and cinema to transport us to the harshness of terrorism, Sistiaga emulates Aramburu, but only in a scenographic part. Because the good thing about literature is that you can never, ever tell the same story by two different narrators.
Thirty-five years ago, Imanol Azkarate was kidnapped and executed, but his two murderers were never arrested or identified. One of them, Josu Etxebeste, a well-known Gipuzkoan restorer, kept all the letters and drawings that the hostage made during his captivity. Now, he has decided to confess his crime and give all that material to Alasne, the victim's daughter, and turn himself in to Commissioner Ignacio Sánchez, the police officer who investigated the kidnapping. However, Josu will only confess if Sánchez admits that he was a ruthless torturer. While they struggle to reconcile their armed past with a present without rancor or violence, the dormant springs of the Organization are mobilized. Former militants who, like Etxebeste, were never arrested and who have no intention of confessing and changing their comfortable lives in post-conflict Euskadi will try to stop this rapprochement by all possible means.
Purgatorio, the extraordinary first novel by journalist and investigative reporter Jon Sistiaga, portrays a Basque Country where guilt is not buried or hidden, but rather surfaces and is recognized. He speaks of a land strewn with rusty weapons in abandoned hideouts, of betrayals, loyalties and atrocious secrets, of repentant terrorists, proud terrorists and victims who cannot close their mourning. Purgatorio is also a tense thriller that will keep the reader in suspense until the last page, but it is, above all, that place where one must recognize the wrong done and try to heal.
You can now buy the novel “Purgatorio”, by Jon Sistiaga, here:
