More than 700 novels aspire to Alfaguara Prize, to be decided tomorrow – El Universal (Venezuela)

Madrid.- More than 700 manuscripts from Spain and Latin America attend the eighteenth edition of the Alfaguara Novel Prize, considered one of the most important in the Hispanic world and fails morning a jury chaired by the Spanish writer Javier Cercas.

This prize is worth $ 175,000 and a sculpture by Martín Chirino. The winning work is published simultaneously in all Spanish-speaking countries.

In this issue there have been 707 original, of which 320 came from Spain, Mexico 106, 102, Argentina, Colombia 77, 41 US, 32 in Peru, 20 and 9 Uruguay Chile.

Since its first edition in 1998, presided over the jury of the Alfaguara Prize writers Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Mendoza, Alfredo Bryce Echenique Antonio Muñoz Molina, Jorge Semprun, Luis Mateo Díez, José Saramago, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Ángeles Mastretta, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sergio Ramirez, Luis Goytisolo, Manuel Vicent, Bernardo Atxaga, Rosa Montero and Laura Restrepo.

Javier Cercas, president of the eighteenth edition, is a leading novelist whose work has been translated into more than thirty languages ​​and has won awards such as the National Narrative for “Anatomy of a Moment” or the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino in 2011 and the Prix Ulysse in 2012, both the set of his work.

Last year the prize went to the Colombian writer Jorge Franco with his novel “outside world”. In 2013 it won the Spanish José Ovejero with “The Invention of Love”, in 2012 the Argentine Leopoldo Brizuela with “One night,” and in 2011 won the Colombian Juan Gabriel Vásquez with “The Sound of Things Falling”.

Others recipients of the award have been Eliseo Alberto, Sergio Ramirez, Manuel Vicent, Clara Sanchez, Elena Poniatowska, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Xavier Velasco, Laura Restrepo, Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf, Santiago Roncagliolo, Luis Leante, Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, Andrés Neuman and Hernán Rivera Letelier.

Founded in 1964, Alfaguara has opted from the beginning for literature in Spanish and Latin America. And this spirit was born Alfaguara Prize eighteen years ago, which has become a benchmark of the awards granted to an unpublished work written in Spanish.

In March 2014, Alfaguara was bought by the publishing group Penguin Random House.