SM Award. ‘The sea behind’ denounces the indifference and comfort of the West regarding the drama of refugees, a subject little addressed until now in children’s literature
In 2007, the Murcian writer Marta Zafrilla won the Wide Angle award for youth literature for ‘Message encryption’, dedicated to Rubén Castillo “for deciphering my days.” Fifteen years later, another Murcian writer, Ginés Sánchez, has repeated the operation, winning this award, one of the most prestigious in the genre, for ‘The Sea Behind’. Sánchez, a novelist with an overwhelming ability to put together literary plots, yesterday only had words of praise for his partner, the poet and graphic designer Cristina Morano. «This is something between Cristina and me!», he made it clear, in a conversation from Madrid, the same day that the winners of the SM El Barco de Vapor Awards were announced [que fue a parar a manos de Cristina Fernández Valls por ‘Jack Mullet de los Siete Mares’] and Wide Angle. «We are Cristina and I, because she did, above all, the documentation work and I began to write. The award [35.000 euros] It belongs to both of us, we have discussed everything».
According to the jury, ‘The Sea Behind’ is «a committed novel, capable of naming a silenced reality that gives voice to the situation of refugees in the world; because it is an urgent and necessary story, very rarely treated in literature and because it is an unprecedented voice with great strength, while being deliberately simple and poetic».
The story, says Ginés Sánchez, takes place in a refugee camp, “hell, a disaster.” We soon become familiar with two names: Isata, an orphan girl who has lost her voice, and her great friend, almost her sister, the teenage Dibra. In this same place there are thousands of children who speak in different languages, «and each child arrives with their own scars, with their story of flight, death and family members who have disappeared along the way. Among all, the most special is Wole. However, he disappears and they will never see him again. This is how they begin their search without delay, and not even the existence of the mafia that, in the refugee camp, threatens and mistreats the most vulnerable, will make them give up on an adventure that will be increasingly risky.
“The most toasted book”
The novel was originally written in 2020, but they did not have time then to submit it for the award. “We left it saved to present it in 2021 and we have been successful,” celebrates Sánchez, winner of the XXIII Murcian Book Award of the Year 2020 for the novel ‘Las alegrías’ (Tusquets) and author of celebrated stories such as ‘Lobisón’, ‘Los gato pardos ‘, ‘Among the living’, ‘Two thousand ninety-six’ and ‘Women in the dark’, all appeared in Tusquets. With this story in which refugee children become detectives, “many, many, many things happen,” the narrator bites his tongue, not locating that refugee camp anywhere, “because in my books many times I don’t there are geographical references». The news has been kept secret “since December,” he says: “I think it’s the most toasted book in history.” With Cristina, of course!, that he has kept the secret.
On Tuesday 26, Queen Letizia will present the award in Madrid.
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