sive constructs of today. Ramon Saizarbitoria is a leading Basque novelist not very well known outside of the Basque Country. His literary work (always originally written in Basque) seeks to create a textual legacy for a language that has his torically been by and large oral and does not have a strong literary tradition. Saizarbitoria is not content with just writ ing, he also wants to elevate Basque literature in one dra matic leap through the history of literature all the way to modernity. To accomplish this goal, his recipe is advance ment of the literary technique through the use of formal devices that disrupt traditional narrative linearity. His pur pose, as he states, is to place Basque literature among the literatures of culturally advanced nations. However, this seem ingly innocent desire for progress should be scrutinized to uncover its traces of bourgeois ideology as part of the liberal, humanist obsession with technical and scientific evolution.