This is a very good book-length essay analyzing the literature and movies created in response to the ETA violence in the Basque country. It has some annoying aspects, for sure. Portela used some really boring, vapid “violence is bad” variety. Plus, she interspersed the analysis with autobiographical chapters written in the third person. I always feel very uncomfortable around people who talk about themselves in the third person because it’s very self-infantilizing. And hey, Portela published a female Bildungsroman right after this book, and that’s a genre that’s all about self-infantilization.
But the analysis of the books and the movies is good. Portela took the best habits of American literary criticism and transplanted them to Spain, which is great.
