About the Author

Novelist and critic Iban Zaldua was born in Donostia-San Sebastian in 1966. His previous fiction titles include: Ipuin euskaldunak (Basque Stories, co-authored with Gerardo Markuleta); Gezurrak, gezurrak , gezurrak (Lies , lies, lies); Traizioak (Betrayals) and La isla de los antropólogos y otros relatos (Island of Anthropologists and Other Stories). In 2006 he won the top honor for Basque authors, the Euskadi Prize, for Etorkizuna: hamabost ipuin ia politiko (The Future: Fifteen Almost Political Stories). He is a regular contributor to newspapers and other media in the Basque Country. He currently lives in Vitoria-Gasteiz and is Professor of Economic History at the University of the Basque Country.

Reviews

Basque literature written in the Basque language, which this essay means to discuss, is not one of those literatures that have the best press in the world. Each time a work originally written in Basque wins the national award of, let's say, a country like Spain—so zealous, by all appearances, about its plurality, its "unity in diversity"—suspicions and slanderous comments emerge about the book in question: as if winning a national award, even in Spanish, was not something suspicious to begin with. At least until you yourself win it. The worst part is that the literature in Basque is not appreciated, or at least not much, even by Basques themselves." – This Strange and Powerful Language