Guernica

An entertaining, often horrific but also often funny, family saga set before, during and after the Spanish civil war, and sadly topical at the moment that Catalan separatists are being fired on in Barcelona (cf. an old cartoon in La Vanguardia - in case of insurrection, break out the fascism).

I liked the use of the Basque (or Euskera) language, an isolate that may be a 'language of farmers' (cf. a recent discussion about the Welsh (Cymreig) tongue) but is complex, fascinating, and unrelated to any other. Although while I can see why the title is written as it is - it's the same spelling as the name of the famous mural - I did rather wish that, where the town is named in the book, he'd used the modern spelling of Gernika.