LINAZASORO, Karlos

(Tolosa, 1962)

"I was born in Tolosa, and I have been a librarian in the town's public library for a long time. I studied Basque Philology at university, but I don't teach. I have written four collections of short stories: Eldarnioak (1991), Zer gerta ere (1994), Ez balego beste mundurik (2000), and Ipuin errotikoak (2001) (1). I have also written four volumes of poetry, a theatre play, and quite a few books for children and young people. Poetry and the short story are my favorite genres; the novel doesn't fit in my world-view. I believe that writing makes me free, but I don't know if I love freedom. These are some of my teachers: Kafka, Borges, Cortázar, Felisberto Hernández, Beckett, Rulfo, Saki, Wilcock, Piñera, Chekov, Hrabal, Mrozek, Bernhard, Anderson Imbert, Arreola, Poe...

I like short stories that make use of fantasy, have a touch of playfulness, are splattered with the violence of life, challenge the reader and are powerful, suggestive, full of the unexpected; I also think, at the same time, that in short stories humor and irony are a must; for they are the most appropriate weapons for combating human tragedies, alienation, solitude, or the absurdity of life, because they offer distance and protection. The short story can transgress all laws, but has its own rules: within them there's still room for you to really be free, in the reign of allegory and metaphor."

The existential anguish caused by death is very much present in the work of Karlos Linazasoro. This anguish appears in his stories under the guise of the literature of the absurd (echoes of Kafka and the theater of the absurd), and is expressed in the upside-down fantasy of irrational logic (Cortázar). The mixture of reality and dream, the suffocating atmosphere, delirium, savagery... these are the elements of Linazasoro's tales. This explains why there are so many crazy people in his stories, because they depict the irrationality behind the mask. We chose the story for this anthology, The Derailment, from the second of his four collections of short stories, Ez balego beste mundurik (2000, If There Is No Other World). To the reader it will seem a surrealist and brutal story of a person reading Cioran while traveling on a train, and we are certain that he will find the comparisons and frightening scenes disturbing.

(Olaziregi, M.J., "Foreword", in An Antology of Basque Short Stories, Center for Basque Studies - University of Nevada, 2004).


Further information about the author:

(1) English translations of Linazasoro's short story collections, in order of appearance: The Eldarnios, Whatever happened?, If there wasn't another world and Errotic tales.


© Photo: Susa (Literaturaren Zubitegia)