- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: The Harvill Press; First Edition edition (18 July 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1860461352
- ISBN-13: 978-1860461354
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,373,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Two Basque gunmen on the run after a bomb attack find refuge in a hotel whose owner, Carlos, used to belong to their movement. With the World Cup in progress, the Polish football team is staying in the hotel. A television crew is infiltrated by undercover agents. This is the first of a trilogy.
About the Author
Bernardo Atxaga, a Basque, was born in 1951. He has written plays, children’s books, radio plays and novels, including Obabakoak, which has been published in fourteen languages including English, and won several prizes. His novel, The Lone Man, was described in The Times, by Peter Millar as 'a spellbinding, sympathetic odyssey into the mind of a former terrorist'.
--This text refers to the
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel deals with the experiences of a Basque revolutionary in exile. He works in a hotel near Barcelona. The time of the story is the summer of 1982 when the FIFA World Cup is taking place in Spain. The Polish team are staying at his hotel and any people interested in Polish football would find the novel interesting (how many other novels mention the great Zbigniew Boniek?). The main approach of Bernardo Atxaga is to study the mind of the central character. He gives voices to different persona in his mind - the cynical voice is called The Rat. It would be a very thoughprovoking read for students of psychology. My only criticism is that Atxaga uses too much "literary licence" at the end of the novel when one of the central characters speaks to us about the experience of his death. It is a flaw.
All in all, it is a very exciting thriller with lots of colour. I highly recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Lone Man is one of those proverbial "couldn't put it down" thrillers. I started it two days ago and only work and the need for sleep interrupted my reading. The protagonist is an enigmatic man who's conscience uses the voices of the people in his life, a dead friend, his brother, to process his thoughts as he is in a situation in which the pressure continually rises. He is taciturn, yet likeable, instincively decisive, but makes a few mistakes, and above all is wrestling with guilt over the past and present. He has put himself in risky situation and must question himself and all those around him, including those he thinks of as friends in order to protect himself and see his way through to safety. The writer (and the translator) have done a great job, using direct prose and straightforward descriptions to create a very unique sort of quasi-antihero in tight corner of his own making.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Intense, intriguing novel about terrorism and football !
7 Aug 1999
Format:Paperback
This book starts quite slowly and during the first half I wondered if it was going anywhere, but I stuck with it and was rewarded with an exciting second half. Most of the action takes place not on the football field but in Carlos's extraordinary head: it is inhabited by his paranoias, lusts, dreams and memories of his homeland ...and by a series of loud voices alternately mocking, warning and advising him. These battles in his head are intense, compelling and convincing - they are the book's greatest strength. The book's other arena, the one outside the protagonist's head is also small - a few acres in and around a hotel - everything is tight, tense and claustrophobic. Although football is only a backdrop, anybody who loves the game will enjoy the way the author integrates the Polish team and the 1982 World Cup into his narrative. One may stop to wonder about a sympathetic central character who is a vain, womanising terrorist, kidnapper and murderer, but Atxaga is - like Greene and Dostoevsky - clever enough to make us side with his villain in the psychological battle with the chief police officer. Because the author made me care about Carlos, I found the last 50 pages very tense and the book hard to put down.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
An Unusual, Introspective Thriller
3 Sep 1999
Format:Paperback
A taut thriller set during Spain's hosting of the 1982 World Cup. Former ETA Basque terrorists own a hotel outside Barcelona where the Polish team is staying. One of them, Carlos, has allowed two fugitive terrorists to hide out on the grounds without telling his compatriots. The tension gradually mounts as the police close in, others at the hotel find out, and relationships get tangled and tense until the stunning denouement. What raises the book above the level your average thriller is the author's brilliance at getting inside Carlos's head to illuminate his ambivalence about his former activities and current allegiances, as well as his relationships to his dead mentor and mad brother. Gripping book, would make a very interesting film in the right hands.
The lone man!
10 Dec 2003
Format:Paperback
This marvellous story about a former terrorist in ETA (The nationalist organistation, who are fighting for independence).
Carlos has bought a hotel with his friends from the organisation with the money from a robbery! They have been let out because of general amnesty! The place is Barcelona in a hot summer in 1982, where there's World championships in soccer. The Polish team is living in the hotel, where they are protected by policemen, and journalists who're undercover! He does a last thing for ETA by hiding Jone and Jone (Like Bonnie and Clyde) in the backery, where he works! He's disturbed by his consciences, which are his former mentor in ETA, his ill brother, Kropotky (nickname for a russian revolutionary) and the bad one "The Rat". This psychological, magic realism, exciting, thrilling, dramatic and not least exceptionel story about a man, who can't escape from his past! Really must do..
I'm currently writing a project of this book, so if there anyone, who like to ask or comment, they're more than likely to write to me!
E-mail: Casanova1985@ofir.dk
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