With ‘The forms of wanting’, the journalist from Vocento investigates all the faces and formulations of love
Inés Martín Rodrigo (Madrid, 39 years old) fulfilled a dream this Thursday. She became the winner of the Nadal Novel Prize, which failed its 78th edition and for the second consecutive year could not celebrate the traditional and massive literary evening due to a pandemic that does not give truce. The journalist and writer was awarded it with ‘The forms of wanting’, her second novel, built around the family memory of Noray, the protagonist, and in which she investigates all the formulations and possibilities of love.
“There are as many ways of loving as human beings”, explained with emotion the winner, cultural journalist and brand new owner of “the most beautiful prize” with which she dreamed, endowed with 18,000 euros dean of literary awards in Spain. Martín Rodrigo, who works in the Culture section of the newspaper ABC, from Vocento, takes over from Najat el Hachmi, winner in 2021 with ‘They will love us on Monday’, and from Ana Merino, who won in 2020 with ‘El mapa of affections’. It is the third consecutive winner of the precious award, a faithful thermometer of our literature since Carmen Laforet won it in 1944 with ‘Nada’.
The winning novel reflects on love carved out of a family story. After the death of her grandparents, Noray locks herself up and writes the book that was pending and that terrified her, playing with family memories throughout a lifetime. “I believe in the restorative and therapeutic power of literature,” explains the winner, who acknowledges that it has been as balsamic for her to write this novel as for its protagonist. “What is not named does not exist and I, like Noray, have sought relief and light with his novel,” he admits.
Martín Rodrigo had previously published ‘Azules son las horas’ (Espasa, 2016), novelizing the life of Sofía Casanova, the first Spanish war correspondent. Now he turns the wheel and talks about a young woman who anchors herself to the land and to the word like those norays that ships and ships cling to in ports. “She, like me, finds the consolation of words in the harsh history of her family and her grandmother Carmen”, advances from a story that takes place from the civil war to the 21st century and that will be in bookstores on February 2.
The protagonist will end up discovering that “the best way to love is to be true to herself,” said Martín Rodrigo, who had been around for two years with a story “that has accompanied me all my life” and that he dedicated to his mother, Aurora, who died when she was 14 years old. “Let’s not forget that the greatest are, in addition to our memory, our root and our anchor with life” he claimed.
“We live in dark, troubled and difficult times, with hate crimes and homophobes, and it is more necessary than ever to know that there are as many ways of loving as there are human beings: that the ways of loving are infinite as the title of the novel says,” he said. He ended up defining his novel as «a literary quilt made with scraps of my memory to invent and in which I have allowed myself to be contaminated by family memories, but being very clear that any resemblance to reality is pure fiction and that the mirror of literature it gives you back a reflection that never lies »
The jury that awarded Martín Rodrigo by majority was made up of Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Care Santos, Lorenzo Silva and Andrés Trapiello, all authors of the house, as well as Emili Rosales, editor of Destino. In this edition of Nadal, 937 originals had been presented, some less than in the previous edition, when a participation record was set with 1,044 applicants.
The PLA
In the same and atypical evening, the 54th Josep Pla Prize for prose in the Catalan language was awarded, endowed with 6,000 euros and which went to the journalist Toni Cruanyes (Canet de Mar, 47 years old), for ‘La Vall de la llum’, another family story inspired by his grandfather, who died in the early stages of the pandemic. Cruanyes succeeds Mara Barba, author of ‘Tàndem’, winner of the Pla in 2021 in the award.
The Pla Award jury was made up of Laia Aguilar, Antoni Pladevall, Marc Artigau, Montse Barderi and Glòria Gasch, who selected five works among the 44 submitted.
Writer at times, full-time journalist
“Full-time journalist and writer at times.” This is how Martín Rodrigo defines himself, who hopes to dedicate much more time to literature after winning the Nadal. «Writing makes me happy and with this novel I have grown and I have been cured. I carry a very loaded backpack and thanks to literature I am dropping stones », confessed this informant and narrator with Nadal in her hands.
With a degree in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid, Martín Rodrigo coordinates the ABC book area, and regularly collaborates in the ABC Cultural supplement. A gifted interviewer, in ‘A shared room’ (Debate, 2020) and with a nod to Virginia Woolf in the title, she brought together her dialogues with some thirty relevant authors with whom she has “conversed, not questioned” over the course of a decade. . From the young Carmen María Machado to the almost centennial Ida Vitale, she talks with the authors “who most interested me and changed me.” They are talks with Nobel laureate like Svetlana Alexievich, and eternal candidates for the award like Margaret Atwood. Winners of the Cervantes as Elena Poniatowska and Ida Vitale, and the Princess of Asturias as Siri Hustvedt. Authors of disparate creative and ideological registers, such as Vivian Gornick, Zadie Smith, Edna O’Brien, Deborah Levy, Lidia Davis, Jeannette Winterson, Gloria Steinem, Elvira Navarro, Maryse Condé or Isabel Allende.
She is also the author of the essay ‘David Foster Wallace, the genius who did not know how to have fun’, which appears in the work ‘David Foster Wallace: Portable’ (Random House Literature, 2016), and the prologue of the Spanish edition of ‘El diario by Virginia Woolf. Vol. I (1915-1919) ‘(Tres Hermanas, 2017).
One of his short stories, the story entitled ‘Naufragio’, appears in the anthology ‘The cannibal notebook’ (Pálido Fuego, 2017), a tribute to the work of the filmmakers Isaki Lacuesta and Manuel Martín Cuenca. Another of his stories, ‘Jump into the void’, was part of the special issue that the ABC Cultural supplement dedicated to the 125 years of the magazine ‘Blanco y Negro in 2016.
Collaborator of the Fundación Telefónica, the Hay Festival, Acción Cultural Española and the Casa de América, Martín Rodrigo plays a very active role in Spanish cultural life. Not surprisingly, he has been a jury member of the literary awards El Ojo Critico de Narrativa, the Novela de Jaén, the Doss Passos a la primera novela, or the Carmen Martín Gaite.
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