Journalism and literature have received a tribute this Monday from the Mozambican Portuguese-speaking writer Mia Couto, who has unanimously received the Prize for Literature in Romance Languages awarded by the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL). The award, one of the most important in the literary world at an international level, is endowed with 150,000 dollars and is given to outstanding authors who publish in Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian or Portuguese. The jury recognizes the whole of literary creation and in the case of Couto has highlighted the “linguistic innovation” contributed by his work, which includes chronicles, short stories and novels. Couto, the first African author to receive this recognition, has expressed surprise at the announcement of the award and through a video call has made it clear that he thinks of his work as a resistance against what he has denounced as “the act of erasing history” or “historicide”, as he has called it.
Born in 1955 in the port of Beira, on the central coast of Mozambique, Couto has become one of the most prominent authors of the Portuguese language and his work has been translated into more than 30 languages. The roots of his work are in journalism, a profession he began at a very young age to portray the violence that was eating away at his country, which suffered a bloody civil war that began in the late 1970s and left a million dead. The profession of reporting, the author explained, has been very important in his learning as a writer and he has defined it as a “great school of human knowledge”, which has given him the opportunity to be close to the people of his country and to know their suffering first-hand. Couto has stressed that he does not understand any other form of writing other than that of denouncing these sufferings through direct contact with reality and people. “I do not want my literature to be only utilitarian, I do not want to make comforting literature”, he pointed out.
The announcement of the FIL Literature Prize was made on Monday morning in Guadalajara, home of the most important book fair in Latin America and the second largest in the world, in a ceremony attended by local authorities, the FIL management, academics and journalists. Héctor Raúl Solís, president of the prize, reported that in this edition they received 58 nominations from authors from 20 countries (Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, the Congo, Spain, France, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Senegal and Venezuela) and three continents, who were nominated by cultural institutions, publishers, academic organizations and a jury made up of academics and literary critics. Solís celebrated the prize as a recognition of the freedom to create, think and express oneself.
The jury was made up of Professor Graciela Montaldo from Argentina; Doctor of Portuguese Language Jerónimo Pizarro from Colombia; journalist Juan Luis Cebrián from Spain; Mexican translator Lucía Melgar; academic Oana Fotache Dubălaru from Romania; and Professor Vittoria Borsò from Germany. The jury was chaired by Portuguese essayist Carlos Reis, who was in charge of announcing the name of the winning author. They met for two days in Guadalajara to examine the candidates and unanimously decided to award the prize to the writer from Mozambique. This is the fifth time that a Portuguese-speaking author has been recognized. Reis has emphasized that Couto’s literature focuses on the history of his impoverished country, a former colony of Portugal, which achieved its independence in 1975 and then fell into the atrocity of war. “He is a writer of the recent past, the present and the future,” he said. “Couto is important as a writer who tells us all that Africa exists. It exists in literature with its problems, its traumas, its languages, and that is why it also has the right to exist as literature,” Reis explained.
The Mexican editor Emiliano Becerril, who runs the publishing house Elefanta, which has published in Mexico, has received this award with enthusiasm. The balcony of the Frangipani, He loves me, he loves me not and who is about to publish a book of short stories by the Mozambican writer entitled Compendium for unearthing clouds“He is a wonderful author, I am very pleased that an African author has won the FIL Prize,” Becerril told EL PAÍS in a telephone interview from Colombia, where he is currently. “I am also very pleased that an author who writes short stories has won this prize. He is a very versatile author, because he is a biologist, a journalist and his literature is very close to oral tradition. His work has a scientific background and a journalistic concern for nature,” he added.
Couto has received the award as a tribute not only to himself, but also to Mozambican literature, which is nourished by a culture in which it is important to tell stories orally. He has stressed that his country “still lives in war” and therefore his main concern when writing is peace, but also the search for African literary identity, which he has defined as its “universality”. Mozambique, he has said, “cannot forget the traumas that have led it to its independence. That is why I write against the act of erasing history, historicide; my work fights against that,” he explained. His passion, he added, is focused on the act of writing, of “inventing language”, of enriching it, as the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo has done, he said. In fact, he explained, the authors of Latin American magical realism are part of his literary baggage. Couto has also shown his admiration for Mexican narrators Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz and for Colombian Nobel Prize winner for Literature Gabriel García Márquez. His father, he has said, was a poet and his library was filled with stories told by Latin American writers.
The FIL organization will present the award in November, during the opening of the fair, which is organized every year in the capital of the state of Jalisco, located in western Mexico, and which is one of the largest narrative events in Latin America and is also considered the most important editorial meeting in Ibero-America. The FIL was founded by the University of Guadalajara and has an ambitious program that includes the participation of prominent authors of world renown. In this edition, the guest country is Spain and the organizers have announced the participation of personalities such as the poet, literary critic and essayist Luis García Montero and the famous writer Rosa Montero. The fair will be held from November 30 to December 8.
Last year, Mexican poet Coral Bracho won the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages. Bracho, who is considered one of Mexico’s most prominent poets, also became the first Mexican author of this literary genre to receive this recognition. She is the second Mexican writer to do so, after Margo Glantz. In total, seven writers from the North American country have received the award since its creation in 1991. Among the winners, along with Bracho and Glantz, the Portuguese Lídia Jorge, the Chilean Diamela Eltit, the Argentine Olga Orozco, the Brazilian Nélida Piñón and the Uruguayan Ida Vitale have also received the award. In 2022, the Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu received it. Couto now joins that list, who during Monday’s press conference highlighted the pain suffered by his country of more than 30 million inhabitants and the value of literature in denouncing injustice. “The function of literature in times of war is to recognize that all of humanity lives within us,” he said.
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