this statement really blew my mind:
«i read gabriel aresti at twenty years of age; three years later, at twenty-three, i had already finished reading all the basque literature that the dictator hadn’t managed to burn*.»
- bernardo atxaga in ‘by way of an autobiography’ in obabakoak (castillian translation [my english translation])
* though it should probably be noted that even without the meddling dictator, the written literary tradition in the basque language would have always been kind of scarce.
