75 years of Premio Nadal

The Premio Nadal is the oldest literary prize in Spain, awarded by Ediciones Destino (since 1988 part of Planeta group) to the best unpublished novel. We can find many important 20^th century Spanish writers among their list of awardees. Four of them have won the Cervantes prize as well (see our post on Premio Cervantes).

The prize is awarded every year on January 6. It was originally the idea of the journalist Ignacio Agustí, editor of the magazine Destino (belonging to the same publishing house) and best known for Mariona Rebull (743:01.d.17.285). The prize was created in order to discover new talent and provide a stimulus for literary creation in the post-war years. It was named after Eugenio Nadal, former editor of Destino, to honour the literature teacher who had then recently passed away at a young age.

The prize was first given in 1944 to Nada (744:35.d.95.359), an existentialist novel by the young Carmen Laforet. Three years later, it was awarded to Miguel Delibes for La sombra del ciprés es alargada (744:35.d.95.300); he is a major figure in Spanish literature of the 20^th century, who won the Cervantes prize in 1993.

Andrea Camilleri

By Marco Tambara via Wikimedia Commons

We were saddened to hear of the death of Andrea Camilleri, aged 93, one of Italy’s best-loved authors. For so many readers he had brought Sicily to life, capturing the difficult social problems of the island with affection and humour.

In 2014 we posted on this blog a piece to celebrate his Montalbano series. Since then we have continued to acquire further works in the series, the most recent being:

Arsène Lupin versus Sherlock Holmes

Cover of Lupin’s complete adventures (C201.d.5905-5907).

Who doesn’t like Sherlock Holmes? The whole world has embraced Sherlock Holmes, from the United States to Soviet Russia; he is the most portrayed character in the history of cinema, and every year brings its share of new adaptations including the latest on BBC1 starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Who could possibly hate Sherlock Holmes?

The answer is, of course: a Frenchman.

In 1905, the French writer Maurice Leblanc wrote the first adventure of Arsène Lupin, a dashing gentleman-thief for whom burglary is one of the fine arts. Several short stories and novels would follow and in 1908, Leblanc introduced two new characters in Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes: an English detective and his sidekick Dr Wilson. A barely disguised pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, Sholmes was also intended as a caricature of the typical Englishman as seen by the French at the time: red in the face, impassive to the point of apathy and slow of understanding. Lupin of course, was his exact opposite, having every quality of a not-so-respectable Frenchman: chivalrous, terribly charming, and just a little bit cocky.

Gregory Rabassa, 1922-2016

Gregory Rabassa in 2007 (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

Many of the Latin American Boom’s greatest writers owe much of their international acclaim to one man: Gregory Rabassa, who passed away last month.

Rabassa’s English translations of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch (9743.c.74), Mario Vargas Llosa’s The green house (9743.c.108) and, in particular, Gabriel García Márquez’s One hundred years of solitude (9743.c.116) sold millions of copies and brought these authors to a much wider audience. He enjoyed a particularly close and mutually appreciative relationship with Cortázar and also translated the great Brazilian authors, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Amado and Machado de Assis, amongst many others.

Umberto Eco, 1932-2016

Picture by Università Reggio Calabria (GFDL), via Wikimedia Commons.

In the book Vertigine della Lista (S950.c.200.947 and S950.c.200.802 for the English version) published on the occasion of the exhibition he curated in 2009 at the Louvre in Paris, Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) discusses the value and meaning of lists throughout history. The Italian author and philosopher argued in an interview with Der Spiegel that “through lists, through catalogues, through collections in museums and through encyclopaedias and dictionaries” human beings attempt to make infinity comprehensible. People describe the sky and try to list stars; poets and lovers endlessly search for words to describe their feelings, often making a list of things they love as a way of starting their pursuit.