Bernado Atxaga (Asteasu, Gipuzkoa, 1951), the pen name of José Irazu, was praised by The Guardian as “not just a Basque novelist, but the Basque novelist”, as he is one of the most internationally acclaimed authors to write originally in the Basque language.
His prolific body of work—including novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and also children’s books and novels—has earned him numerous national and international awards, recognizing both individual works and his overall literary career. Atxaga has traditionally been known for his unique spin on the universal topics that Hispanic literature has traditionally tapped into—memory, cultural identity, war, and human relationships—as his stories are culturally grounded in the folklore of his homeland, the Basque Country.
Atxaga is perhaps best known for Obabakoak (1988), a short story collection translated into more than thirty languages, and celebrated for bringing Basque literature to a global readership. This work was the winner of the Spanish National Narrative Prize, along with several other international awards, and was made into a film by Montxo Armendáriz as Obaba (2005).
Obabakoak was followed by novels such as The Lone Man (1994), National Critics’ Prize for narrative in Basque; The Lone Woman (1996); The Accordionist’s Son (2003), Critics Award 2003, Premio Grinzane Cavour in 2008, and adapted for theatre and film under the direction of Fernando Bernués; Seven Houses in France (2009), finalist in the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2012; Days of Nevada (2014), Premio Euskadi, and Water over Stones (2020). His latest novel is titled Swallows, and will be published in April 2026.
Several awards are testimony to Bernardo Atxaga’s literary trajectory:
2023 Ostana International Prize for Literary Creation and The Defence of Minority Languages
2021 Liber Award
2019 National Prize for Spanish Literature
2017 LiberPress International Literature Prize
Not just a Basque novelist, but the Basque novelist… His sophisticated books have put Basque culture on the map. (The Guardian)
The questions Atxaga raises are universal, and the time is indefinite. The stories are surprisingly fresh and wonderfully blended. Atxaga holds the attention by his sheer craft, by the complete control he exhibits as he leads us through this “game of the goose”. (The Independent)