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The Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi won the Cervantes Prize 2021, the highest recognition of letters in Spanish. Along with the award, the jury highlighted her work as “the trajectory of one of the literary vocations of our time and the size of a writer capable of expressing her talent in a plurality of genres”. She is the sixth woman to receive the award.
The Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi has been awarded the Miguel de Cervantes 2021 Prize for Literature in the Spanish Language, endowed with 125,000 euros (about $ 144,800), according to the jury’s decision, made public this Wednesday by the Spanish Minister of Culture and Sports , Miquel Iceta.
The jury recognizes in Peri Rossi “her career as one of the great literary vocations of today in a wide variety of genres and her ongoing commitment to contemporary issues such as the condition of women and sexuality”.
Peri Rossi literature “is a constant exercise of exploration and criticism, without shunning the value of the word as an expression of a commitment to key issues of contemporary conversation such as the condition of women and sexuality”, indicated the jury, who He also highlighted his work as a bridge between Latin America and Spain that “must remain as a perpetual reminder of exile and the political tragedies of the 20th century.”
Iceta highlighted the multitude of genres that the author has cultivated, although she chose a poem, ‘My house’, to underline Peri Rossi’s love for literature: “My house is writing,” says a verse from the winner in this work .
The Cervantes Prize as a gift on his 80th birthday
An award that the Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi has received with great gratitude and great joy that has become the best gift for the writer, according to her editor.
“On Friday the 12th it turns 80 and there is no better gift than this well-deserved recognition,” declared its editor José Ángel Zapatero. “It is a well-deserved recognition,” he told the EFE Zapatero news agency, who published his latest work, ‘La Insumisa’, last year with the Menoscuarto label.
“She is very happy, very excited and super happy with the award,” added her closest environment.
Zapatero assured that Cristina Peri Rossi is “an excellent storyteller and a magnificent storyteller” and regretted that it took so long to recognize the worth of this woman from the Hispanic-American boom and post-boom. Author of ‘La nave de los locos’ -her most famous work-, Peri Rossi is also a contemporary of a generation of men such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar.
Sixth woman to receive the Cervantes Award
“I believe that it has not had the relevance that it should have had at the time, just for being a woman. But it is better late than never,” said Zapatero, who has had “the pride” of publishing two novels, two storybooks, two collections of poems and an essay by Peri Rossi, with his publishing labels Cálamo and Menoscuarto.
Before her, only five women had won the Cervantes Prize, the last of them, Ida Vitale in 2018, also Uruguayan; after the Spanish María Zambrano (1988) and Ana María Matute (2010); the Cuban Dulce María Loynaz (1992) and the Mexican Elena Poniatowska (2013).
“It is the second female voice and the third Uruguayan voice recognized with the Cervantes Prize. For a country of three million inhabitants it is a gigantic distinction,” said the Vice Minister of Education and Culture of Uruguay, Ana Ribeiro. Juan Carlos Onetti was the first Uruguayan to receive the Cervantes in 1980.
The Spanish Joan Margarit (2019) and Francisco Brines (2020) were the last two winners awarded annually by the Spanish Ministry and which recognizes the figure of a writer who, with their work as a whole, has contributed to enriching the Hispanic literary legacy.
Cristina Peri Rossi, born in Montevideo in 1941, has lived in Barcelona since 1974, when she went into exile by the military dictatorship that reigned in Uruguay until 1985. The artist also has Spanish nationality.
With EFE
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