Chirbes wins his first major official award – The Truth

Rafael Chirbes (Cullera, Valencia, 1949) adds another award to its long list of accolades. This time the National Fiction Prize for his novel takes ‘On the Shore’ (Anagram), a story that explores the Spain of the crisis and the moral distress generated by the economic downturn. The award, granted by the Ministry of Culture and endowed with 20,000 euros, Joins Critics Award and Francisco Umbral, which has also been awarded Chirbes. The writer attributes the success of his novel to tired of a society that no longer supports more lies. “The public is tired of this farce,” says the novelist.

‘On the Shore’ was also considered by the three major newspapers as the best book of the year. It is a story that compels the reader to turn their eyes toward a past full of mud. The story told Chirbes elapses in the swamp Olba a rotting where everyone throws their garbage and stands as a symbol of Spain today. In those buried debris and filth are the values ​​that govern a society which is highly critical Chirbes. “It’s a bitter novel, almost post-mortem; It has left me very angled. ”

The jury has seen in the last play of the narrator “a novel of extraordinary literary construction, dealing with the current reality is not limited to realism, showing a formal richness and poetic devices that transcend ‘. Chirbes not reject the 20,000 euros prize of this institutional award given by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, as it did his predecessor in the recognition, his colleague Javier Marías. José Ignacio Wert If you go to the ceremony, which will hear from Chirbes what you think of their politics.

The author, who has broken a narrative silence that lasted six years, has again put the finger on it. If by ‘Crematorium’, his previous novel, he got into the marrow of the pitch property addresses in this novel corrosion that plague the devastating aftermath of a dilapidated brick and millions explosion. Some fireworks that have left a desolate places in every way.

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Forest Cranes

The recognition raises the writer reactions. “I am proud because this is an award that represents the narrative of my country. But the truth is that it also gives me some uneasiness because I hate the policy that the Government was doing. My characters are affected by the policy of this country. They would throw me to the head without hesitation. ”

In his highly acclaimed novel, Chirbes travels the landscape after the battle to tell how the forest of cranes his previous efforts narrative has become a graveyard of skeletons of concrete, broken hopes and desires and dignities betrayed.

For the writer, the origin of the crisis lies in the construction of the European Union, where a club of rich countries loaned Spain vast sums of money to burdensome interest and now are paying. “It’s the old story: the rich enslave the poor. We were invited to caviar and champagne and now force us to pay. ”

In his view, the powders are Transition sewage sludge when it was believed that Spain was inscribed in modernity and is retaining atavistic behavior. In fact this story is not born for being a Valencian. “It could have arisen Pujol in Catalonia, Andalusia or the ERE Madrid Esperanza Aguirre.” “We follow the same or worse. No longer amazes us anything, “says the writer, who sees the Spaniards an attitude that tends to look like normal nasty things.

Chirbes believes the country is engaged in a sort of second Restoration, when the political and financial oligarchies power is distributed outside the social majority, as the workers and the Chartists, while conservatives and liberals alternated in government. “The origin of many fortunes, and normalitos positions, remains doubtful. It checks to delve into the historical memory in some depth and not as a spectacle for viewers spellbound. ”