David Imaz has spent many years living in exile on a ranch in California, far from his native Basque Country. Nearing 50 and in failing health, he decides to write the story of his youth in the village of Obaba, and the powerful, sweeping narrative that ensues takes the reader from 1936 to 1999.

Obabakoak means 'events that happened in Obaba', the village at the centre of a novel composed of 26 linked tales and parodies written with a delicate sense of childlike innocence. Underlying these stories is a darker theme of loss, as the narrator of the book becomes a victim of his own tales.

1903, and Captain Lalande Biran, overseeing a garrison on the banks of the Congo, has an ambition: to amass a fortune and return to the literary cafs of Paris. His glamorous wife Christine has a further ambition: to own seven houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad. At the Captains side are an ex-legionnaire womaniser, and a servile, treacherous man who dreams of running a brothel. At their hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new officer and brilliant marksman: the enigmatic...