ORIA FILMS

BERNARDO ATXAGA

He was born in Asteasu, Guipúzcoa, in 1951. It is his pseudonym for Joseba Irazu Garmendia. He got a degree in Economics Sciences at BilbaoUniversity. He worked as a teacher of Basque, radio screen writer, bookseller, economist, etc., until he started to devote his time, at the beginning of the 80’s, only to literature.

From the very beginning, he revealed he was a constant and thorough worker (in 1972 he published his first poems in Basque in a brief anthology; in 1976 he published his first novel “De la ciudad”; in 1978, he published his book of poems “Etiopía”). The way he deals with the inner world, made Bernardo Atxaga be an excellent reference of the expressivity and strength of the Basque as a learned language.

But, even more, according to the accurate opinion of Valeria Clompi, Atxaga always builds his literature in a parallel way to the language that expresses it in each occasion. And, of course, his talent has been fairly recognised from 1989: Obabakoak edition (published in 1988) won the enthusiastic fervour of all the Latin American countries. The Euskadi Award, the Critics Award, the Prix Millepages and the translation to more than twenty languages have given the author a deserved respect, ratified up to nowadays with no exceptions in each one of his publications. The best examples are his collection of poems called “Poemas & Híbridos” (1993), “Dos Hermanos” (1995) or “Esos Cielos” (1996).

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