The Majorcan writer Neus Canyelles has been awarded the Lletra d’Or award for the best book of 2021 for Authorized Autobiography (Empúries). This year’s jury was made up of Sebastià Alzamora, Míriam Cano, Andreu Gomila, Llucia Ramis and Pau Sif, and highlighted a “clear and meticulous, but at the same time ironic and powerful” writing, with which it continues “the autofictional story that we know from his splendid earlier books.” For the jury, in this volume he tries to reconstruct “a childhood in which everything seemed to conspire in favor of a certain joy of living, and the contrast with an adult life in which one must learn to compromise with fear, and particularly with the fragility of own mental health. “An audacious author -continues the jury-, lucid and elegant, who earns a place of respect in the memory of the reader, and one of the most interesting narrative worlds of current Catalan literature”.
Canyelles (Palma, 1966) has already begun his work by braiding it with his life with Neu d’agost. Un llibre de memòries (Di7, 1993), and he continued to do so, as in Les millors vacances de la meva vida (Empúries, 2019), but he has always maintained that he has no interest in strictly explaining his life, but rather it is about writing literature and it must be read like any other literary work. The critic for La Vanguardia wrote of her that “there are more and more readers who know that Canyelles is a very singular voice. Starting from a biographical experience (…), she reconstructs the happy time before uncertain events precipitated a psychological disaster”.
The Lletra d’Or national award in 1956 by private initiative and independent of any institution. The first three names on the list -Salvador Espriu, Josep Pla and Josep Carner- set the standard for a prize with a long literary history, and which was recognized last year by Guillem (Ara Llibres) by Núria Cadenes.
As is tradition, a jeweler from the Capdevila family will present the prize – a gold lapel button that represents the Greek letter fi (?), the classic symbol of balance – to the award-winning writer during a meal organized by the publisher who has published it, which is scheduled for next week.
Catalan version, here
