The rain that fell on the Eve of the Kings was the first gift that Their Majesties of the East left in Barcelona, ??but not the last. Yesterday, before heading back to their exotic palaces, they made a stop at the Palace hotel to go incognito to the literary evening organized every year by Destino publishing house and at which the Nadal and Josep Pla prizes are awarded. A tradition that has been going on for 80 years, in the case of Christmas, since it was in 1944 when Carmen Laforet proclaimed herself the winner with Nada, her first novel. In the case of the Catalan award, the encounters go back a few years later, in 1968, with Terenci Moix distinguished for Waves on a desert rock. César Pérez Gellida (Valladolid, 1974) and Jaume Clotet (Barcelona, ??1974) are now added to the list of winners, taking over from the current winners, Manuel Vilas and Gemma Ventura, both present at the ceremony.
Pérez Gellida did not hide the excitement of the moment when he finally had the Christmas prize trophy in his hands, endowed with 30,000 euros. “There are two words in the dictionary that have always caught my attention because of their meaning. One is joy and the other is thanks”, he assured those present and the members of the jury, which in this edition was made up of Inés Martín Rodrigo, Care Santos, Lorenzo Silva, Andrés Trapiello and E mili Rosales.
For this competition, the author from Vallisole, with successes such as Astillas en la piel (2021) or Nos crecen los enanos (2022), presented himself under the pseudonym Keyser Söze and with the manuscript Orquídeas negras, a rural thriller which will arrive in bookstores renamed as Bajo tierra seca and which has an enigmatic and seductive protagonist. She is a widow who lived in Extremadura at the beginning of the 20th century and who marked the fate of those who crossed paths with her, staining the path she walked on with passion, blood and mud. The story begins with an investigation after his house caught fire. The agents are trying to find out what caused the fire and what has become of her.
“It’s a novel that has traveled with me for years in my head and that I wanted to tackle at the moment I felt the maturity of the craft”. Its pages reflect “difficult times, a lot of poverty, latifundia, caciques and hunger, a lot of hunger”, he detailed about the plot of the novel, which will hit bookstores on February 7.
The surname Pérez Gellida has long resonated in literary circles and, more recently, in audiovisual ones, since in October the adaptation of Memento mori, the first part of the trilogy, premiered on the Amazon Prime platform Verses, songs and pieces of car. Or, what is the same, one of the most powerful literary debuts of recent times, which has allowed the author to develop a solid career in the field of letters and become one of the Spanish writers of black novels most recognized in the Spanish literary scene.
Directed by Marco Castillo and starring Yon González and Juan Echanove, the series was well received by the public, and it does not rule out producing more seasons. This police thriller is set in his native Valladolid and begins when the corpse of a young woman appears with her eyelids amputated. Inspector Sancho foreshadows a chain of murders and, with the support of “Carapocha”, one of the most important experts in serial killers, follows the trail of corpses that Augusto, a sociopath with refined tastes, is leaving around the city.
