WHAT WE TRIED TO BURY GROWS HERE by Julian Zabalbeascoa reviewed by Collin Kim • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Julian Zabalbeascoa, reviewed by Collin Kim
WHAT WE TRIED TO BURY GROWS HERE (Two Dollar Radio)

In the opening pages of Julian Zabalbeascoa’s debut novel What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, young Isidro Elejalde leaves his Basque village inspired by the writings of a mysterious political essayist named Erlea. The year is 1936 and what follows is a devastating chronicle that refuses the comfortable distance of historical fiction, instead thrusting readers directly into the visceral experience of a civil war that tore Spain, and countless families apart.

The author’s decision to structure his novel as a chorus of interconnected voices proves both the book’s greatest strength and its most demanding aspect. In one chapter, we follow Félix Otxandio, a reluctant soldier who freezes when confronted with mutilated bodies, his hands trembling as he refuses to touch a bloodied corpse: “I had a chance to save myself—perhaps. It was selfish, I knew, but if I touched her, I’d be accepting an invitation to cross a threshold.” Just chapters later, we’re inside the mind of Xabier, a priest who volunteers to die in place of a condemned man, wrestling with whether his pacifist beliefs make him complicit in others’ suffering.

This kaleidoscope approach offers extraordinary intimacy—we experience the war through a child’s confusion as much as a seasoned fighter’s calculated brutality. But the constant shifting of perspective can be disorienting. Just as we become invested in one character’s fate, Zabalbeascoa pulls us away to another voice entirely. Some narrators, like the young refugee Mateo clinging to a tree while fascist lorries pass below, appear for only a single chapter before vanishing from the narrative. Others, like Isidro, weave through multiple sections, but always filtered through different moments and emotional states.

This fragmentation creates both the novel’s power and its greatest challenge: we’re forced to piece together not just individual stories, but how they connect across time and space, much like survivors of trauma themselves must do.

The author’s decision to ground many chapters in specific historical moments, from the bombing of Gernika to the fall of Barcelona, demonstrates impressive research. Yet Zabalbeascoa never allows historical weight to overshadow the intimate human stories at his novel’s heart. In one particularly powerful chapter, Kattalin, a woman, is informed of the aerial destruction of her hometown, then takes up arms herself. The author captures both her initial terror and her gradual hardening with remarkable precision: “Every time I looked at it, smelled its fragrance, I should be reminded of the loss now crushing me.”

Perhaps most impressively, Zabalbeascoa avoids the trap of simple moral binaries. Characters on both sides of the conflict reveal themselves as fully human, capable of cruelty and tenderness,cowardice and courage. This nuanced approach reaches its peak in chapters focusing on Xabier, a priest whose commitment to pacifism leads to his execution, and his brother Isidro, whose quest for revenge gradually transforms into something approaching understanding.

The novel’s treatment of the Basque experience within the broader Spanish Civil War feels particularly urgent given the rise of authoritarian nationalism worldwide.. Zabalbeascoa, whose own family roots trace to the Basque Country, brings an insider’s understanding to questions of cultural identity under threat. The recurring motif of the bertsolari, Basque improvisational poets, serves as metaphor for the power of voice and story to preserve what occupying forces attempt to erase.

With multiple distinct narrators across 20 chapters and 254 pages, certain voices inevitably receive less development than others. Yet this imbalance feels purposeful rather than problematic. Characters like Gable, appearing only briefly as he clings to a tree watching fascist trucks pass, function as vivid snapshots—moments of human experience preserved in amber. Meanwhile, figures like Isidro and Xabier receive deeper treatment and development across multiple chapters, allowing us to trace their psychological evolution and maturation. This variation in narrative depth mirrors how we actually encounter people during wartime: some cross our paths briefly but memorably, while others become central to our story. Yet this fragmentation feels deliberate, mirroring the way traumatic history reaches us: in shards of shrapnel, through multiple perspectives, often contradictory and incomplete.

The novel’s final chapters, set in French refugee camps and depicting the war’s aftermath, resonate with contemporary urgency. Zabalbeascoa’s portrayal of displaced persons, particularly the haunting figure of “Have You Seen,” a mother endlessly searching for her lost son with a worn photograph, speaks directly to countless parents who’ve lost their children in Mediterranean crossings or border detention centers across history. When Zabalbeascoa describes refugees hiding their identities, burning documents, or facing hostile locals who view them as threats rather than humans fleeing violence, the parallels to contemporary anti-immigrant rhetoric become unmistakable.

What We Tried to Bury Grows Here announces Zabalbeascoa as a significant new voice in historical fiction. His prose can shift from lyrical to brutal within sentences, matching style to the emotional demands of each moment. More importantly, he demonstrates how the best historical fiction illuminates present concerns while honoring the complexity of the past.

In our current moment of rising authoritarianism and nationalist movements worldwide, Zabalbeascoa’s debut feels less like historical fiction than urgent contemporary literature. This is a novel that grows in the mind long after reading, its title proving prophetic: what we attempt to bury, whether trauma, history, or the voices of the displaced inevitably returns, demanding recognition.

The book succeeds not just as historical testimony but as literature, joining works by Antonio Muñoz Molina and Javier Marías in the ongoing project of Spanish writers reckoning with their nation’s complicated past. For readers seeking fiction that challenges as much as it moves, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here offers a profound meditation on memory, identity, and the human cost of ideological conflict.

Collin Kim is a high-school junior in Los Angeles, California. When not immersed in his highly caffeinated school life, he is an avid surfer and violist, enjoys reading and editing submissions to the multiple literary magazines he is involved in, and of course, writing. He has been nationally recognized by American High School Poets, Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards, Pulitzer Center, Poetry Society of Virginia, and more. His work appears in DePaul’s Bluebook.