The writer continues with ‘Nosotros’ in the vital line that he opened after ‘Ordesa’ and wins the award three years after his partner, Ana Merino
Manuel Vilas (Barbastro, Huesca, 60 years old), is the winner of the Nadal Prize for novels, the dean of literary awards, which failed its 79th edition this Friday night in Barcelona. The Aragonese writer, a recent finalist for Planeta, shields his track record with this award that he obtained thanks to a sentimental and vitalist work that he has entitled ‘We’.
Thanks to her, the 30,000 euros of prize money are pocketed, the highest in its long history, since until last year the check for the prestigious and almost octogenarian prize was only 18,000, which was paid by her predecessor, Inés Martín Rodrigo, for ‘The forms of wanting’.
Vilas presented his novel under the pseudonym ‘Emil Watson and with the provisional title ‘La enamora del viento’. The Aragonese writer and collaborator of the Vocento newspapers adds to his list of awards the appreciated award that his partner, also a writer Ana Merino (Madrid, 51 years old), got the prize three years ago, daughter of the writer and academic José María Merino who won it with ‘El map of affections’, his first novel. Thus, they are one of the exclusive couples who will be able to display two Nadal trophies in their living room, as in their day Sánchez Ferlosio and Martín Gaite.
vitalist theme
A writer linked in recent years to the publishing group created by José Manuel Lara Hernández, finalist for Planeta in 2019 with ‘Alegría’ and after publishing ‘Los besos’ in 2021, Vilas focuses on the same vitalist theme with a story of love and loneliness. A sentimental and emotional story that is thus built on the memory and the invocation of the protagonist who was the love of his life.
It narrates the adventures of Irene, a woman of today, who after having lived what she considered the most perfect marriage in the world, with the loss of Marcelo, her husband, will see her world come crashing down. She then decides to start a trip along the Spanish Mediterranean coast in which she will discover an unusual way to continue living with him to move forward.
The story is narrated by a woman of today, whose world falls apart after living what she believed was the most perfect marriage.
Vilas has consolidated his singular literary profile traveling from poetry to autofiction with ‘Ordesa’, his first great success that in 2018 catapulted his career with twenty editions, as many translations and more than 100,000 copies sold that he would continue with ‘Alegría’ . ‘Ordesa’ was his personal inquiry into his family past and a portrait of a disappeared Spain with which the writer has a love-hate relationship. He began writing it days after the death of his mother, in May 2014, after her divorce, and spurred “by a lot of feelings that he did not know existed and that had a spectral air.”
He studied Hispanic Philology and for more than twenty years he worked as a secondary school teacher in various institutes. He became known as a poet with ‘El cielo’ (2000), and he chained ‘Resurrección’ (2005), ‘Calor’ (2008), ‘Gran Vilas’ (2012) ‘El sinkimiento’ (2015), and ‘Una sola vida’ (2021), autobiographical, existential and critical poems with the Spain of his time that gave him the Jaime Gil de Biedma, Fray Luis de León or Ciudad de Melilla awards.
Miscellaneous
‘España’ (2008) opened his narrative career. They followed titles such as ‘Aire nuestro’ (2009), ‘Los inmortales’ (2012) and ‘El luminoso regalo’ (2013), the storybooks ‘Zeta’ (2014), ‘Seven hundred million rhinos’ (2015), and two miscellaneous volumes that cannot be labeled: ‘Lou Reed was Spanish’ (2016) -mixes youthful memory and an imaginative recreation of the trips through Spain of the former leader of the Velvet Underground-, and ‘Listen to me’ (2013) , collection of their Facebook states.
Winner of the Aragonese Letters Award in 2015, Vilas is a regular signature of Colpisa and various literary supplements. He lives halfway between Madrid and Iowa City where Ana Merino teaches creative literature classes.
A total of 997 works had been submitted to this edition of Nadal, of which only five made it to the final. The jury that awarded Vilas was made up of the writers Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Care Santos, Lorenzo Silva, Andrés Trapiello and the editor Emili Rosales.
On the same evening, the 55th edition of the Josep Pla prize for prose in Catalan was awarded, endowed this year with 10,000 euros compared to 6,000 in the last edition. They went to the young journalist Gemma Ventura Farré (El Vendrell, Tarragona, 32 years old) for her first novel, ‘La llei de l’hivern’ (‘The Law of Winter’). She presented it with the provisional title of ‘Quan obri els ulls, apareixeràs’ (‘When she opens her eyes, you will appear) and under the pseudonym Laura Vallclara.
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