The jurors of the Literary Prizes of Girona have announced their winners, among which the 56th Prudenci Bertrana prize for novels stands out, endowed with 30,000 euros and published by Columna, which was won by the writer Jordi Solé (Sabadell, 1966 ) por The Year I Loved Ava Gardner.
The jury – Montse Barderi, Gemma Lienas, Gerard Quintana, Care Santos and Glòria Gasch – have 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 such as the Costa Brava of the fifties”. In the novel, a character remembers when he met the famous actress when she was filming Pandora and the Flying Dutchman in Tossa de Mar, “an unforgettable filming that marked his passage from childhood to youth marked by his love for the actress, which will last lifetime”.
The 46th Miquel de Palol poetry prize (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 search in one’s own interiority that the poet makes, transformed into a walker who walks 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) has 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-three originals have been submitted . According to the jury – Francesc-Marc Álvaro, Mita Casacuberta, Míriam Díez-Bosch, Joaquim Maria Puigvert and Josep Lluch -, the awarded work is an invitation, based on the philosopher Epicurus, to explore the world of gardens: “From philosophy Greek until modernity, this essay traces a journey through the concepts of garden, orchard, 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 Youth Fiction Prize (endowed with 6,000 euros) – Dolores Cabrera, Patrizia Campana, David Cirici, Xavier Gual and Anna Pardos (Mixa) – has proclaimed Sònia Guillén Colomer (Terrassa, 1969) the winner. ) with Cicatrius, which will publish FanBooks. The play has as protagonists two young women broken by a bad decision. The two meet at the hospital, where they will seek comfort from each other and explain their story to us. The novel puts the problem of mental health among adolescents on the table, an essential reading to understand the difficulties that young people have to face.
The prizes will be awarded on September 19 during the traditional Nit Literària of the Fundació Prudenci Bertrana, when the Aurora Bertrana translation prize is also announced, the Cerverí prize for best song lyrics and the Lletra for digital projects of Catalan literature. The next day, the books will arrive in bookstores.
Catalan version, here
