Because, despite the theoretical debates, the market has spoken quite clearly in recent years and has given the novel the world reign of letters. Everything else follows him: fame and glory are considered authentic writers for those who write the novel. The kingdom and the anthrax belong to the novel.

But among the readers of ARGIA is some Republican. Perhaps they would like to know what is there this year in the field of short narratives. Let's start by publishing in the spring with a couple of books that perhaps received less attention than they deserved (one of the evils of Basque literature, porcine, many long-standing writers suffer from lack of attention).

I think this is the case of Karlos Linazasoro, one of the most original voices in our letters. This year he published the book Samuel and Slawo (Alberdania): a tour de force, 86 stories in 150 pages, combining the black humor and the tendency to absurdity, so common in it. As the title itself announces, these stories written under the influence of the literatures of Beckett and Mrozek are a demonstration of concentrated storytelling, sometimes microstories, sometimes a longer history of breathing.

Arrate Egaña is also a long-standing writer in children's and youth literature who has published this year the storybook for adults Itzalen brightness (Erein), ten years after its appearance. In this collection of narrations is the Márquez narration, winner of the Gabriel Aresti story contest in Bilbao in 2013. Written in direct prose and without free decoration, the reader will find complex social portraits.

If the brief narrative has a claim in us, it is Iban Zaldua. This year he presented Ipuina is a deceit (Elkar) in which he has combined components appreciated in his writing – round finals, ironic tone – with a tendency towards a narrative of long innovative breathing compared to previous books. They're stories of all kinds. From the sketches and then for the project he wrote a science fiction visit to the museum gun, to the adultery Ipuina that integrates the elements of the essay into a long story. Varied stories, faded by a personal and identifying style.

Without being as fruitful as the previous ones, Zarauztarra writer Jon Benito has the ability to give a space every time he publishes something. Twelve years after the publication of his last poem, Lagun minak (Black Pharmacy) has seen the light in a literary exercise that combines poems and stories in search of the proper writing of our time. The reader will find broken characters in the stories that make up this work and a constant effort to go beyond conventional narrative styles.

If we look at the books that have not been originally published in Euskera, it is noteworthy that the harvest of this year’s story allows us to read two Catalan authors for the first time in Basque: One of them is Atsoa (Txalaparta) by Caterina Albert i Paradis, who wrote with the pseudonym Victor Català, and we can read it thanks to the work of a translator who has signed as Sagastibeltza. The book collects ten stories, originally published in a period of 50 years. The stories chosen by Blanca Llum Vidal propose a journey from the initial modernism of Català to its late texts. The book foreword has been written by Cira Crespo Cabillo.

Together with this writer, he highlighted between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an author who has become popular in the last batch of Catalan writers: The book by Irene Pujantes Zatak (Igela) consists of 21 stories and is in Basque thanks to the translation of Amaia Apalauza. Pujanos tells anecdotes that seem from everyday life, but that daily life is broken, revealing uncomfortable truths. They are stories of an individual and social nature, on topics such as motherhood, unemployment or mass tourism, written with rupturistic humor and original looks. The book was written by Uxue Apaolaza, recently awarded the Euskadi Prize.

In the Universal Literature collection that the publisher Igela shares with Erein, Joannes Jauregi has translated into Ohio, a major name of American literary history, although the author was considered a minority writer: Winesburg, by Sherwood Anderson. The Chicago Literary Renaissance was called a member of the movement, this book that we can now read in Euskera is perhaps Anderson's most praised work, and it affected America's most important descendants, Faulkner, Hemingway. As the translator explained in the book foreword, the impossibility of escaping life in the village often appears in 21 stories, and the book is generally characterized by the “look of the grotesque”. What is that? You will understand it by reading it.

Before concluding, we cannot fail to mention that Alpha and Omega, storyteller, Anton Chequhov, have returned to Basque this year. It was 32 years since the time of the Ibaizabal of the Universal Literature Collection Xabier Mendiguren Bereziartu brought some tales of Russian; then, in 1997, Juan García, Juan Kruz Igerabide and Juan Mari Mendizabal published another anthology in Erein (Memorable Tales), but since then we lived the drought. Iker Sancho has published 31 stories translated by Elkarri, so the news has been unbeatable: In addition to renewing the opportunity to dive into humorous and deep stories of the Russian writer, it has given us 31 good reasons, at least, to learn the little sister of the novel.