Rome doesn’t pay traitors, but it does pay good writers. José Zoilo, a biologist by training and profession, has won the sixth Edhasa Narrativas Históricas 2023 prize for his novel La frontera de piedra, a new mosaic on the history of Rome, which narrates an unprecedented defeat against the barbarian peoples and which meant the “beginning of the end of the empire, although it was not known then,” the author explained. The action takes place on the eastern border, an area little studied and where not too far today a war is being waged in Europe.
The jury for the award – made up of Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, Jacinto Antón, Mari Pau Domínguez, María José Solano and Daniel Fernández (president of the jury and of Edhasa) – valued the novel as “a magnificent evocation of a very interesting but little known: the fall of the Roman empire on its eastern border. Written with historical rigor, the characters stand out in it, which are diverse and rich, the epic tone, the excellent dialogues and the ability to drag the deepest human feelings into the historical-war genre. The decision was made unanimously and Zoilo wins a prize of 10,000 euros (which in silver denarii is difficult to calculate).
Zoilo is not an unknown author. He has published with Ediciones B the trilogy Las cenizas de Hispania, set in the last century of Roman Hispania, and El nombre de Dios (Cerros de Úbeda Award 2021) and Londemamo (City of Cartagena Historical Novel Award 2022). Six books in four years. How is it possible, considering that he spends approximately a year documenting himself? The author explained it: “What I am passionate about is writing; It’s what gives me the most pleasure.” And to that he has dedicated two hours a day for many years, without thinking about the possibility of publishing… “until I have had children; Now I can only dedicate half an hour a day to it, ”he confessed to La Vanguardia.
The Edhasa prize-winning book, for example, began to be written during the pandemic. The first three he wrote between 2011 and 2012 (and they began to be published in 2019). He says “to have more works in the drawer” and he was prudent in explaining how deep and full that drawer is. But he did advance that La frontera de piedra will have continuity and it may be that the Alans, the barbarian people to whom he wanted to pay tribute, end up reaching the Iberian Peninsula, although Zoilo dropped that possibility shrouded in fog, almost unintentionally, for that reason. not to reveal more than necessary.
He explained that when he writes, he does it intensely, with very few elements in the script, and that he gets inspired as he advances in the plot. And that he needs a “switch”, in addition to documentation and visiting scenes, “so that not everything remains cold on paper. In addition to the fact that once there, you are inspired ”. In the case of The Stone Frontier, it was clear to him that he wanted to focus attention on the Alans and on the Battle of Adrianople (August 8, 378), a disaster for the Roman legions and the first and only time in Roman history. in which an emperor, Valens, died. The “switch” was found in Safrax, “an Alan who commands the Goths.”
Zoilo, passionate about history, stressed that it costs him “very little to write, but a lot to put a title, but in this case it was clear from the beginning that the title had to be the stone border”, the Roman attempt to prevent the entrance of the towns that came from the north in search of opportunities. And, of course, the comparison served to remind us of the current borders in front of the immigration that intends to enter Europe. The author added that what attracted him to these periods “is the element of change, of social, war, political, religious conflicts… Christianity is beginning to prevail”, but it still does not dominate everything. As an anecdotal detail, but which also demonstrates the effort to document himself, he recalled that at that time Rome began to change crucifixions for beheadings: “They were less expensive and faster.”
