MEET THE AUTHOR: Julian Zabalbeascoa

Author Julian Zabalbeascoa of his much celebrated debut novel, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, will join Sterling Holywhitemountain, a NewYorker contributor, Stanford Fellow, and author of fiction and nonfiction about the history and culture of the Blackfeet tribe in conversation at the Bookshop West Portal in San Francisco.

ABOUT THE BOOK: WHAT WE TRIED TO BURY GROWS HERE
In late 1936, eighteen-year-old Isidro Elejalde leaves his Basque village in Northern Spain, spurred to join the fight to preserve his country’s democracy from the insurrectionists by the rousing words of a political essayist. Months earlier, Spanish generals launched a military coup to overthrow Spain’s newly elected left-wing government. They assumed the population would welcome the coup, but throughout the country people like Isidro remained loyal to the ideals of democracy, and the Spanish Civil War began in bloody earnest.

In Bilbao, Mariana raises her two young children while, with her writing, she decries the fascist-backed coup attempt and their German and Italian allies, imploring the world to support democracy. As the Nationalist forces assault the country, Mariana and Isidro’s lives intersect fleetingly, yet in meaningful and lasting ways.

Through a chorus of voices—a female soldier in an all-male battalion, a reluctant conscript recently emigrated from Cuba, a young girl whose parents have abandoned her in order to fight against the fascists, among others—we follow Isidro and Mariana as they struggle to maintain their humanity in a country determined to tear itself apart. 

ABOUT THE JULIAN
Julian Zabalbeascoa’s debut novel What We Tried to Bury Grows Here was published November 2024 by Two Dollar Radio. Among other journals, his fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, Gettysburg Review, LitHub, One Story, and Ploughshares. He teaches in the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he leads annual study abroad programs to Donostia-San Sebastian, Havana, Paris, and Madrid.

WORDS OF PRAISE
“Daring… In What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, almost two dozen narrators vie to convey the danger and uncertainty of life in a country where “tomorrow you never knew who would throw you against the wall for the actions of today.” We hear from priests and soldiers, mothers and children, prisoners and refugees. Amid the inevitable violence and horror, there are the equally inevitable heroes and villains, but for everyone the world has acquired ‘an evil stink.’ Mariana knows her compatriots have no choice but to fight on, yet she also knows that ‘the war will make us unrecognizable to our former selves.'”
—Alida Becker, The New York Times

“Zabalbeascoa’s characters cannot foresee the tragic end to the war, but readers do, and this chilling knowledge adds to the tension in this compelling and hauntingly prescient novel.”
—Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature

“Zabalbeascoa brings together family lore and mountains of research to paint a kaleidoscopic portrait of the Spanish Civil War, particularly its impact on the people of Spain’s Basque region.”
—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

“A stunning first novel, ambitious, intensely true, certain to be read for a long time. Zabalbeascoa is a phenomenon.”
—Philipp Meyer, author of The Son and American Rust

“Julian Zabalbeascoa is ferociously brilliant at rendering both the epic sweep of history—Franco’s rise to power, the Spanish Civil War—and the particular contours of daily life. The wineskins soldiers stash under their hospital mattresses. A bit of cake dipped in marmalade. The “metallic whistle” of a rifle shell. What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a stunningly powerful novel about the individual acts of courage and violence that have shaped history as we know it. A virtuosic and unforgettable debut.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of State of Paradise

“What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a startling book, beautiful and horrific, that navigates the complexities of Basque Country during the Spanish Civil War, in which fascism and communism, regionalism and nationalism, and faith and skepticism do battle across a brilliantly evoked, suffering landscape.”
—Phil Klay, National Book Award winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries

“In the tradition of such master story tellers as Isaac Babel and Phil Klay, Julian Zabalbeascoa has written a piercing narrative set during the Spanish Civil War. Alive with wonderful characters, moments of dread, bathos and humour, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here illuminates a crucial period of history. This is a timely and absorbing novel.”
—Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field, Mercury, and The Flight of Gemma Hardy

“This is one of the most finely crafted and devastating novels of war that I’ve ever read. Julian Zabalbeascoa comes to us as that rarest of writers, at once firmly grounded in history as he gazes to the future. What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is an urgent and beautiful read that left me stunned. This book couldn’t be more timely.”
—Joseph Boyden, Giller Prize winning author of Three Day Road and The Orenda

“Julian Zabalbeascoa is the real deal, a major talent, and the story he’s telling here is both riveting and terrifying.”
—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls

“The rise of authoritarian rule is never an abstraction, it is always horrifically concrete for those who experience it. But as each bloody injustice fades into history, we run the risk of losing what we have learned that may have the power to forestall yet another such assault on democracy, which is just one reason why Julian Zabalbeascoa’s timely and deeply moving novel should be required reading for us all. Written with spare, evocative, and hypnotic prose, Zabalbeascoa takes us deeply into the lives of men and women – many of them of the Basque minority – who fought Franco and his allies during the Spanish Civil War. This is an important and necessary work of art for our fraught times, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
—Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog, Such Kindness, and Townie: A Memoir

“A breathtaking look at the Spanish Civil War, told as an impressionistic tapestry of first-person narrators: each chapter a voice from the swell of men and women, fighters and children, loyalists and journalists, who took part in Spain’s bloody fight for democracy.”
—Scott Preston, The Borrowed Hills

“What We Tried to Bury Grows Here implores us to look back to history to not fall into passivity but instead take note of the perils of today. Zabalbeascoa structures his novel as a series of first-person vignettes, giving rise to a chorus of characters. It’s an imaginative and impressive feat of literary ventriloquism to hear from Basque soldiers. This structure allows Zabalbeascoa to comment on the collective nature of war while showing how it is an intensely personal undertaking. Through these characters, we are allowed to see slices of their war and how it builds to something more encompassing.”
—Brock Kingsley, Chicago Review of Books

“Debut novelist Zabalbeascoa’s decision to tell his story through a plethora of individual narrators perfectly captures the messiness of a civil war… [What We Tried To Bury Grows Here] builds to an emotionally compelling climax.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Packed with standout scenes…It’s a memorable portrait of a country in upheaval.”
—Publishers Weekly

“One of the strongest and most evocative novels of 2024. Zabalbeascoa’s debut uses multiperspective narration to excellent effect as we are pitched across Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Essentially a series of soul-stirring short stories stitched together to give one a glimpse at the horrors of modern war. If Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is a document of a future battle with the far right and this a harrowing account of past struggles the only conclusion to be made is that the fight against fascism will never be over. For me, though, it is this novel’s use of quiet moments and fragmented domesticity that brings everything home. Shades of Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive. can’t recommend this novel enough, a modern classic.”
—Douglas Riggs, Bank Square Books (Mystic, CT)

“Zabalbeascoa brings the reader directly into a conflict few of us learn about in the US. Set in the Spanish Civil War, each chapter of What We Tried to Bury Grows Here jumps to a different character, each telling their own story with Isidro making himself known throughout. I found myself searching for Isidro while at the same listening carefully to the new perspective of the chapter’s narrator. This is not an easy read, war is brutal, but I kept returning to live with these soldiers and survivors.”
—Laura Lamarre Anderson, lala books (Lowell, MA)

“What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a beautifully written novel about the horrors of war, as seen through the eyes of soldiers on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, as well as those enmeshed in the gruesome conflict: wives, journalists, priests. Yes, this is historical fiction, but Julian Zabalbeascoa’s depiction of the soul-crushing victory of the fascist regime is also a prescient warning in these times of democratic peril. At the same time, this is primarily a heartfelt work of fiction, and it’s the humanity of these characters (or, occasionally, their lack of humanity) that propels these linked tales, culminating in a truly marvelous novel. One of the year’s very best!
—Michale Keefe, Annie Bloom’s Books (Portland, OR)