Irati Elorrieta (Algorta, Bizkaia, 1979) speaks slowly, that is, it takes time to think what it means. Then, he throws at quite speed what he means. He also writes slowly. Ten years ago, he published Burbuilak, his first paper. Time has had to be given to start drafting quickly enough. But he walks quickly. Twenty years after his trip to Berlin, he has taken us quickly to his neighborhood, to Wedding, and to his neighborhood within the neighborhood: Gesundbrunnen. We have stopped at one of those beautiful terraces, so frequent in Berlin, in the last light of a fresh spring day in May.

Is uprooting one of the most powerful literary materials out there?

The other side of uprooting is the search for identity, and yes, for me there's a powerful material for literature, but I think there are other issues that attract people's attention.

For example?

For in the case of the Basque literature, for example, ETA or armed conflict clearly. These are the headlines of the big letters.

It is curious what he says, because many have accused the Basque literature of having written little about the conflict.

Well, it's kind of relative, where you look at it. I don't think much has been written, and I think it's a subject that has a hook, not just in literature.

How do you experience the story? The homeland of Fernando Aramburu, who lives in Germany, is a phenomenon that has occurred in Spain. Have you read it?

I have not read it. The book has been exposed in the shop windows of the large bookstores in Berlin. I was astonished to read in the newspapers here that Aramburu has written the first great novel that makes the story of the Basque conflict. A journalist who knows nothing about what he writes, repeats and reproduces some content based on the interests of another person. Most of the time, we don't even realize it.

Has the conflict between us had too much weight? Also in literature?

I would not say that it has had too much weight in literature, in relation to its presence and impact on real life. There, yes, in daily life, I have been made too much of the space that the conflict occupied in some times. For years I have felt that there had been a great blockade and then a certain tiredness.

Uprooting is not necessarily synonymous with uprooting. Or yes?

Doesn't it have to go at the same time? I don't think about these terms when I write. The approach I make is neither analytical nor conceptual. I have not written it on the basis of a thesis. I've written about these issues, or close to them, I don't know, but I'm looking for something that interests me. I see disorder and search in relation to those words, and also a kind of pain. A theme that appears in the book is how the character is physically in one place, but with his head in another place, in Vietnam or in Sopela… Mentally they are in another space. And that's the everyday thing, it's not something that happens to you from time to time. It's there permanently, and it's about living with it. I don't know if it's a banishment or a uproar. It's being in two places.

[Takes a long pause] You don't know if you're ever going to feel like here, but what is that "like there"? It's not just a matter of space. As there is another era, three years ago, ten years ago… this situation does not exist either. It's comparing to something that barely exists.

Why are you interested in uprooting?

Because it creates tension and you don't know who you are. I think identity issues are literally strong: who you are, how you live… Even if you don’t go anywhere, you can be confronted with those questions, but when you go somewhere else you hardly have the chance to be confronted. These are some of the questions you need to answer.

Do you associate the issue of identity with the times, especially the liquid and mobile society? Has this been the stress of uprooting?

It's something that's related to the time we live in, and that's why I see it as a literary material. When you talk about it, you automatically talk about the time in which we live. I think the stories of that search for identities are the ones that interest me. If you know who you are, there's no story. To have a story, you have to do a search. If you know everything, there's no story.

You can find different ways to translate the concept of uprooting into literature: one could be to resort to the dramatic epic, the other in a more subtle way. Have you made the second choice?

Yes, I think I've made that choice with that issue and with others. For example, the most toxic partner relationship. I had a hard time getting there. Telling great dramas or epic is not my style. How, however, to maintain the tension, to keep the reader’s attention? And I'm not going to the drama? If I want to go down there and take the reader with me, where will I stay? That has been the challenge.

And have you found that balance?

I don't know if I found it, but there's the search. I didn't take the highway, I went down small roads, looking at the landscape. And there's the struggle. Do you need a little more, do you need less? Decisions are continuous and sometimes very small. This phrase is too much; if I do not say it, no one may know what I am talking about.

Inevitably there was a lot of rewriting.

Yes, I've been writing all the time, fixing, fixing. I have written several versions. Some of the ones that relate to the overall structure, where to locate what, that's one thing that I've tried a lot. And another thing is, when I'm counting too much, when too little.

Once again you've built an urban novel. Urban space is of great importance: Paris, Berlin… But it can also be said that, even if it is urban, the interior of the house is as important as the exterior.

Yes, but you haven't been conscious. A quarter of the scenes in the book take place in a kitchen. And besides the kitchen, there's a lot inside. However, it is true that the city is very present. I think in this book, the dichotomy between public space and intimate space doesn't make much sense. The relationship is dialectic. At home comes the world, and vice versa, you can be out and concentrate on yourself. I believe that there are things that do not occur on the level of consciousness and that take another path. The quote that opens the book says that windows are the senses of a house. The moment you put the windows into a house, the world comes in. In those scenes that I have in the interior spaces, there are windows. The windows are open. I don't see the interior or the exterior separate.

A parallel: Can literature be a window into life? That is, literature and life are inseparable?

Literature is a window to contact other spaces and times. The link that makes a window is two-way, and the literature also puts us in touch with the interior.

It's been ten years since you published the book Pompas. Did you have it clear from the beginning that it was going to be the novel Neguko argiak?

From the beginning I knew it was a novel and it was nothing else. And I immediately realized that I had gotten into a great mess, because I had had children, and the life I had had prevented me from writing a novel. Writing a novel requires getting in and being in there. Be and be… Underwater. I would go in and out, go in and out… So you couldn’t write a novel, but it was a novel!

I don't know if you're using Twitter, but Iñigo Aranbarri has written on that social network. “From the detail to the coral box of people seeking refuge, the beauty of the novel by Irati Elorrieta Neguko Argiak.” The comment consists of two paragraphs. What do you think?

I don't have Twitter, but it's been sent to me by those who have Twitter. With so little I could not describe the background of the novel. At least I agree.

What about the second one?

-I liked that the qualifier was strange next to the beauty. I don't know where he says it, but I liked to read it. I like the combination. Beauty can be in many ways, and we live in a society where beauty is one and the only one. And the gem doesn't miss it there, and that's why I like it. It suggests a beauty coming out of the canon. In the time we live, the concept of beauty is very standardized, and I like it to be something that comes out of it, and that's beautiful.

At the time you published the bubbles, they began to use the name of the Erasmus generation to name the works of several young writers. A controversy arose in the world of literature. What do you read after a decade?

Because I don't live in Euskal Herria, I can't really know what was said outside the media. I lack information. I guess those who took for allusions, and I also said they would talk to each other. But I haven't been a part of it. I think more than one person used that label, and not everyone used it with the same intent. I felt offended and I know I have not been the only one. I have that information. We were greeted as a described generation of Ironia, and if you've felt offended, you might be taken as someone without a sense of humor. There are statements that were not made from respect, and I do not know to what extent, after ten years, this subject has been overlooked, or something has been rethought, something has been withdrawn... I have not received that, at least. But it seemed like a generation was writing books on a prescription. And I can be a member of a generation, I have no problem with that, but I haven't written it following a recipe, neither Pompas, nor Winter Lights. I don't see the grace to put it that way: I saw an attack behind those words disguised as irony.

Time has shown that you are members of this generation who have travelled very different paths

I think so, and I do not think the issue has been raised. And there's something like a thorn.

Have you ever been able to uproot yourself with literature?

No, I haven't had it. It has happened to me that writing was a secondary thing to me. I haven't confessed the importance of writing to myself. There's a time when I realize it's not a background and I pulled it out of the drawer and put it in the foreground, because I felt it. I've never completely gone away, I've never been tired of writing, but I haven't recognized the importance I had.

“After all, this time he doesn’t know what’s behind him either,” the narrator says in a moment. Irati Elorrieta What are you persecuting in the literature?

I also don't know what I'm looking for, I'm looking for, I'm lying around. Alternating the periods guided by intuition with those of reflection, I've been discovering in the process what are the things that are repeated or the things that are in the text. How to tell that simultaneity of space and time, or how to tell something without drama but with strength, the issue of resistance, how to bring the stories of all the characters to the body of the text and those many voices that are within me. Darkness has been the starting point, and gradually it has been opening its way to light. I understand literature as an attempt to shape something that escapes from the visible.

What brand does literature leave in general in your life?

I can't imagine life without reading it. Literature is a way of living, both writing and reading. I can't separate life from literature; it's a way of being, of looking at things. It gives me balance. When the literature channel is open, I can no longer imagine life without it. Literature also leaves marks that are not abstract when it is closely linked to life: the writing process of this book has left physical marks on my skin. The skin is the limit of our body and has suffered violent reactions.

Today, there's no distance in this global world, everything and we're all interconnected. Do you see the Basque literature, being here, from the distance or not?

I see the distance from the people in Basque literature, but I certainly see it closer than many people living in Euskal Herria. Many people live in the Basque Country and are not interested in literature. I follow the Basque literature, what is published, I read things… In this sense I have no distance. But I don't know what people are talking about this book or about it. I cannot, but I do take what I gather from the media and what I read.

And what do you get, what do you see now?

I see great diversity. I see diversity in the generations, in the themes, in the genres that are chosen, in almost every way. And I think that's good.

What is the most literary corner of Berlin for you?

There's more than one, but especially the subway. I like to have the antenna on the subway. The subway is very literary. Above all, I travel by bicycle, I use little of the metro, but I am very attentive.

Has the subway landscape changed a lot since you arrived in Berlin?

I believe that the situation of those who are asking for money on the metro has deteriorated, and that they are becoming more and more. Now there are a lot more tourists, 20 years ago there were hardly any tourists here.

Is Berlin still keeping stories, novels, for you?

What I am writing now is not in Berlin. I still need a break, or I don’t know… But I keep writing.