Nevada Days is a fictionalised account of Atxaga`s nine months` stay as writer-in-residence at the Centre for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada. He is accompanied by his wife, Angela, who is also doing research there, & by their two daughters. During their first few weeks, the family encounter a strange mapache (racoon), which is always staring at them from the garden, a flight of helicopters immediately overhead, a black widow spider, a warning about bears, a party of prisoners in the desert, a lake that is somehow far too calm & too blue, &, not long into their stay, the kidnap & murder of a young girl living in the house right next door. Atxaga tells us about all these strange encounters, & about his colleagues at the university, about the trips the family make to California & across the Sierra Nevada & to Lake Tahoe, but this narrative is also interspersed with accounts of his dreams, with stories from his past. Nevada Days seductively weaves together past & present, & shows us how deeply marked we are by experience & history & relationships, however fleeting or enduring, & reminds us what a very strange thing life is. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa