The jurors of the Girona Literary Awards have announced the winners, of which the 56th Prudenci Bertrana Award for Novel stands out, endowed with 30,000 euros and published by Columna, which went to the writer Jordi Solé (Sabadell, 1966) for The Year I Loved Ava Gardner.
The jury – Montse Barderi, Gemma Lienas, Gerard Quintana, Care Santos and Glòria Gasch – has assessed that it is “a delicious, luminous story, full of experiences and glamour, with unforgettable characters such as Ava Gardner, Mario Cabré or Frank Sinatra, in a incomparable setting like the Costa Brava of the fifties”. In the novel, a character remembers when he met the actress when she filmed Tossa de Mar Pandora y el holandés errante, “an unforgettable shoot that marked her transition from childhood to youth marked by her love for actress, which will last her whole life”.
The 46th Miquel de Palol prize for poetry (endowed with 6,000 euros and published by Proa) was won by Jordi Solà Coll (Barcelona, ??1963) with L’ombra de les hores. The jury – made up of Teresa Costa-Gramunt, Rosa Font Massot, Pere Gimferrer, Víctor Obiols and Miquel de Palol – highlighted “the metaphorical path of research into one’s own interiority that the poet takes, turned into a walker who follows the paths of life, from the shadows of the passage of time and loss, until finding refuge in the word”.
Josep Muñoz Redon (Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, 1957) won the 44th Carles Rahola essay prize (endowed with 6,000 euros and published by Pòrtic) with the work entitled El jardí d’Epicurus, to which twenty submitted -and-three originals. According to the jury – Francesc-Marc Álvaro, Mita Casacuberta, Míriam Díez-Bosch, Joaquim Maria Puigvert and Josep Lluch -, the award-winning work is an invitation, based on the philosopher Epicurus, to explore the world of gardens: “From the Greek philosophy to modernity, this essay traces a journey through the concepts of garden, garden, paradise and nature in authors such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, Claude Monet or the philosopher Byung-Chul Han”.
Finally, the jury of the 38th Ramon Muntaner prize for youth novels (endowed with 6,000 euros) – Dolors Cabrera, Patrizia Campana, David Cirici, Xavier Gual and Anna Pardos (Mixa) – has proclaimed the winner Sònia Guillén Colomer (Terrassa, 1969) with Cicatrius, which will publish FanBooks. The protagonists of the play are two young women broken by a bad decision. Both meet in the hospital, where they seek comfort in each other and tell us their story. The novel brings to the table the problem of mental health among teenagers, an essential read to understand the difficulties that young people have to face.
The prizes will be awarded on September 19 during the traditional Literary Night of the Prudenci Bertrana Foundation, when the Aurora Bertrana translation prize, the Cerverí for the best song lyrics and the Lletra for digital projects of Catalan literature will also be announced . The next day, the books will arrive in bookstores.
