Pío Baroja
| Pío Baroja | |
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Pío Baroja
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| Born | Pío Baroja Nessi 28 December 1872 San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa, Spain |
| Died | 30 October 1956 (aged 83) Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation | Author, novelist, biographer, physician |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Literary movement | Generation of '98 |
Pío Baroja y Nessi (28 December 1872 – 30 October 1956) was a Spanish writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98. He was a member of an illustrious family, his brother Ricardo was a painter, writer and engraver, and his nephew Julio Caro Baroja, son of his younger sister Carmen, was a well-known anthropologist.
Pío was born in San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa, the son of Serafin Baroja, also a noted writer and opera librettist.
The young Baroja studied medicine at Valencia and took a medical degree at the Complutense University in Madrid at 21 and mining engineering. Although educated as a physician, Baroja practiced only briefly. As a matter of fact, he would use his student's memories – some of them he would consider terrible – as the raw material for his novel The Tree of Knowledge. He also managed the family bakery for a short time and ran unsuccessfully on two occasions for a seat at the Cortes Generales (the Spanish parliament) as a Radical Republican. Baroja's true calling, however, was always writing, which he began seriously at the age of 13.
Baroja's first novel, La casa de Aizgorri (The House of Aizgorri, 1900), is part of a trilogy called La Tierra Vasca (The Basque Country, 1900–1909). This trilogy also includes El Mayorazgo de Labraz (The Lord of Labraz, 1903), which became one of his most popular novels in Spain.
However, Baroja is best known internationally for another trilogy, La lucha por la vida (The Struggle for Life, 1922–1924), which offers a vivid depiction of life in Madrid's slums. John Dos Passos greatly admired these works and wrote about them.
Another major work, Memorias de un Hombre de Acción (Memories of a Man of Action, 1913–1931), offers a depiction of one of his ancestors who lived in the Basque region during the Carlist uprising in the 19th century.
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Wikipedia