If you want to know, Obabakoak will apparently turn to the collection of short stories, following his nose. And it is not the longest path, of course, although Obaba, already mentioned before in the work, has appeared in other accounts. Before the formation of the Obabaco itself, several local tales could be read loosely, here and there. Such as the explanation of the letter found in the house of the rector Camilo Lizardi, who opened the collection in 1982 – where Obaba first appears. When the snake, from '84, looks at the bird, Atxaga also locates this delicios in that same geography.

For the first time, but in a complete and profound way, what really showed us where Obaba is (the symbolic capacity of the story, the use of different voices, the presence of innocents according to Javier Goñi) was two brothers. The intuition is confirmed by Ramón Sánchez Lizarralde. Two brothers, the short novel, the novel, of 85, the shadows of the big brother by Obama, well, condemned to shadows, but not of little value for it. Iñaki Alde is the one who comes to his aid this time when he includes it among the best novels of the 80s. Let's see why.

One of the two brothers, Daniel, has something, “just a little song in the head,” something that makes him different from the others. And when they become orphans, their youngest brother Paul, fifteen years old, will have to take care of him, he will have to tie him in short if the supposed harmony of the people does not crack. The pulsations are not easy to resist, tensions arise with Carmen and Teresa and the rest of the men and women who are straight and straight and without mantras. Until a movement will mark his fate. The story, otherwise impossible, will end as it should.

That tragedy is what Atxaga tells us, tragedy, even if the narrators are birds, squirrels, snakes and/or geese. Tragedy, although on the surface it seems like a flat story, a little crow that is told. Tragedy, because it shows us that the system is superior to the individual, that the unequal needs the strange outside of the group if the group wants to advance, that the unequal is given in sacrifice in the name of who knows what the higher intentions are. And best of all, that he does this through parody, a miraculous story rather than fantastic, that he turns to the benign and sugary reading of this genre, showing off the reverse. And there is no escape, no forgiveness, no room for redemption. That's Obaba, folks.

Two brothers and sisters. Now that Atxaga has apparently gone to Yangambi, it’s not the longest way to go back to Obaba, obviously the most abrupt.