A “thorough” investigation, which dismantles stereotypes about the author and which adopts a “multidisciplinary perspective”. This is the definition given by the jury of the work Hunger in the eyes, cement in the mouth. A reading of ‘La mort i la primavera’ by Mercè Rodoreda, from Neus Penalba (Tarragona, 1982), winner of the Premio Joan Fuster de Sayo in its 52nd edition, which holds, in general, a participation record.
Chosen from 35 originals presented, Penalba’s work aims to go beyond the readings already carried out on this posthumous text by Rodoreda which, according to the author, “forces us to be ethnographers.” Penalba, a professor of Spanish and Catalan literature at the University of Cambridge, approached the work in 2011 and “dismantled an entire vision that I had of Rodoreda,” a work in which, she believes, the Catalan writer wanted to develop a “primitivism.” narrative, transferring artistic mechanisms that I had already experienced,” he explained this afternoon at the press conference.
Together with Penalba, los Octubre have awarded the Andròmina de Narrativa prize to En Trànsit, by the historian Ferran Garcia-Oliver (Beniopa, 1957) and Tornaràs a mirar-me, by the poet and cultural manager Joan Duran i Ferrer (Sitges, 1978), quienes already fueron ganadores de los Octubre in previous editions: Garcia Oliver won the Joan Fuster prize for Essay in 2015 and Joan Duran, the Vicent Andrés Estellés for poetry in 2019. 121 originals were presented.
The first is a “magnificent psychogeography” of the city of Valencia, “with a rhythm that drags and extraordinarily describes the recent history of the Valencian Country,” according to the jury. A novel that depicts the time of the Transition – about which its author defends that “a lot has been said but little has been written” – and that emerges as a “tribute to my generation” and, above all, to those who arrived from the regions Valencians to discover the Valencian capital as a place of sexual experimentation, but also linguistic, etc. In the second, the description of human cruelty stands out “with extreme sensitivity and the subtle mastery of orality with expressive violence,” the jury stressed.
On the other hand, the Octobers have awarded the Vicent Andrés Estellés Poetry Prize to La crossa de l’aorta, by the poet Irene Tarrés Canimas (Girona, 1979), chosen from a total of 127 originals. The jury members highlighted that the book is constructed as “a journey through the experience of motherhood.” The poet has explained how she wrote the collection of poems from the birth of her son, at times with him on top while breastfeeding, and cited Estellés to remember that “he said that love is a cataclysm and for me love is this too (…) Who “He is teaching me to love, he is my son,” he said.
Finally, the jury of the Pere Capellà Theater Award has recognized La nòria, by playwright Paula Llorens Camarena (Canals, 1986), after discarding 66 other originals. The jury noted that “her poetics skilfully combines with an allegory against romantic love and patriarchal violence.” A dramatic text that narrates the sexual abuse suffered by a girl whom the fiction of children’s stories helps to heal and a reflection on “the society we are building and the values ??in which we do it,” added its author. The awards were presented tonight in a ceremony in Valencia attended by the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès.
