Spaniard Marta Barrio wins the Tusquets novel award

Spanish writer Marta Barrio he won XVII Tusquets Novel Editors Award with Small firewood which, according to the unanimous verdict of the jury which was known today, is a “surprising and surprisingly mature account of a young woman’s dramatic experience and her surprisingly frustrated motherhood.”

It is, according to the press release published by the editor, a story which “maintains at all times a difficult balance between pain and the strength not to be carried away by a premature loss”, and considers that the reward for Barrio is “the confirmation of a new voice with a whole future ahead of it”.

Small firewood recreates the life of a “young woman who lives with an illusion overwhelmed the confirmation of her pregnancy”. He tells about the protagonist’s plans with his partner to adapt the house to the new son, choose the name and imagine life with him. But one morning, a small incident occurs on the way to work: on a shortcut through a park, she is surprised by dogs who run over her before the owner can contain them. At the hospital, they confirm that the pregnancy is progressing normally, but an experienced doctor sees something on the ultrasounds that should have been detected earlier.

Marta Barrio García-Agulló was born in New Haven in 1986 and works as an editor. She has a degree in spanish philology and in East Asian Studies for the Autonomous University of Madrid and obtained a master’s degree in Editing at the University of Salamanca-Santillana. His first novel, Kerguelen’s wild cats (2020), was a finalist for the Premio silverio memorial Canada in the Black week in Gijón.

The jury, chaired by the Spanish writer Almudena Grandes, who said that it is “a novel from which no reader can emerge unscathed; a relentless chronicle of suffering which is capable of projecting light and hope into the future ”, was also composed of Antonio Orejudo, Eva Cosculluela, Barbara blasco, winner of the previous call, and, on behalf of the publisher, Juan Cerezo.

The novel Tusquets prize, to which 778 manuscripts were submitted this time, is sponsored by the Antonio López Lamadrid Fund, constituted in the José Manuel Lara Foundation, and the prize consists of a bronze statuette designed by Joaquín Camps and an advance on copyright of 18,000 euros. Small firewood will be published in the Andanzas collection October 6 in Spain.

During the seventeen-year history of the Tusquet Prize, it was declared null twice – in its first edition and in its fourth -; The Latin American winners were six times and the Argentinian winners three. In 2009, Sergio Olguin for Dark and monotonous blood; in 2012 at Betina gonzález, for The possessed (translated in Italy); and in 2017 at Mariano Quiros, for A house next to the Tragadero.

With information from Telam

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