In a Hundred Graves: A Basque Portrait

by Robert Laxalt

Very Good Hardcover Third printing. Green cloth with gilt lettering to spine. 146 pages. Inscribed to previous owner and signed by Laxalt. Short tear to rear panel of jacket, two small stains to jacket. Contents clean and tight.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1972

About the author

Laxalt was a Basque-American writer whose work was especially well received in the ranching areas of Nevada and adjacent states, and led to creation of several "Basque Festivals" in those areas. Laxalt also served as a consultant to the Library of Congress on Basque culture, and helped start the Basque Studies program at the University of Nevada.

Laxalt founded the University of Nevada Press, which published almost all of his books written after 1964. Laxalt was chosen along with Walter Van Tilburg Clark to be the first writer inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

These 45 vignettes from the French Basque Country quilt a beautiful picture of the land from which Laxalt’s family came. As in his previous book Sweet Promised Land, he says little about himself or how he happens to be there. Instead, he lets the land and people speak for themselves. We read about the vicar who has a habit of inserting the sins his parishioners confess into his homilies, the town crier who holds up a scroll but cannot read, the singers who compete at the tavern, the religious processions up into the hills, the shepherds, the smugglers, the monks, and so many others. As in his other books, Laxalt’s writing style is spare and elegant. My only quibble with this book is a lack of women in the stories, although that probably reflects the era and a culture in which men lived their lives in the villages, fields and taverns, and women lived theirs in the kitchen and the nursery.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A thousand generations of my ancestors have gone down into this ground. Sometimes when I walk through the aisles of stone, the smell of the ground rises up. It is old and familiar, and I know instantly that this ground is in me.

I have been buried here in a hundred little graveyards."

A series of short yet touching vignettes from a place that prefers to be left alone.

[Andrés · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent series of vignettes from the author's one-year stay in the French Basque Country. His touch is spare, his descriptions have a plain honesty that matches well his subjects. I am fond of the vignette, it allows the author to go straight to the truth of a story, its nature is simple and direct. The overall effect of the 60-odd vignettes is quite impressionistic, like a photo collage that yields a single image.