Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez won the IV Vargas Llosa Prize for the novel

Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez he was “unanimously” with the IV Vargas Llosa Prize for the novel for his novel Look back and with a bag of 100,000 USD, after the announcement made by the reporter Leïla warrior, as part of the Vargas Llosa Biennale, organized by the Vargas Llosa Chair and the University of Guadalajara Foundation, with the support of the Guadalajara International Book Fair.

Look back recounts a fundamental period in the life of the Colombian filmmaker Sergio Cabrera and his father, the Spanish writer, poet, actor and director Fausto Cabrera. This book captures the Cabrera era in China of the Cultural Revolution, the armed movements of the 1960s, the Spanish Civil War and exile in America.

“With enormous narrative capacity and extraordinary prose, he works with reality, threading the present with the convulsive twentieth century. The novel is a large canvas, which is thus both a fresco of the most relevant political and ideological clashes of the past century, and a moving and disturbing at times tragic story about parents and children, legacies and guilt, identity and convictions ”, read Guerriero, president of the jury, during the awards ceremony. And to add: “The good story endowed with great encouragement and exceptional resources knows how to pull the strings of adults and children with an uncompromising gaze full of questions that concern us all. Combining a fluid inquiry with a masterful narrative impulse and presenting a courageous take on the real life of its protagonists, the jury decided that the fourth biennial award-winning novel Mario Vargas Llosa is Look back, published in 2020 by the Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez”.

For his part, the author said: “This novel is written from the same obsession that has animated almost all of my previous books. This obsession with recounting the space where private lives, intimate lives, collide with the mysterious forces of history and politics. That’s what all of my books have done, but this time it was a little different and my big challenge as a novelist. To take care of reinterpreting, reimagining, the real life of two people who not only exist but are my friends and whom I know as Sergio Cabrera Colombian filmmaker and his sister Marianela. It would seem terribly unfair to me not to quote them today, after the confidence with which they have placed their memories, their documents, their lives in my hands so that I can reinterpret them through the novel ”.

The third time made the charm of Vasquez, who had already been a finalist for the award in 2014 and 2018. The first time, for Reputations, a book for which he won the Royal Spanish Academy Award and two years later the award for the best book published in Portugal, awarded by the Casa de América Latina de Portugal. In addition, by The sound of things when they fall, in 2011 he won the Alfaguara Novel Prize, and in 2014 the IMPAC International Literary Prize in Dublin. Also for The shape of the ruins He was a finalist for the International Booker Prize, UK (2019) and a finalist for the 2nd Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize, among other awards.

The other finalists were the Chilean Alexandre zambra, for Chilean poet, Argentina Almada Rainforest, for Not a river, the Spanish Rosa Montero, for Good luck, and the Mexican Carmen Boullosa, with Eva’s book.

In total, 412 works were presented and the final decision was taken by a jury chaired by the Argentinian Guerriero and composed ofr Raquel Chang Rodriguez, Efrain Kristal, Rosa beltran, Fernando Rodriguez Lafuente and JJ Armas Marcelo (Secretary with voice, but without a vote), who decided who got the prize of 100,000 USD.

Before the awards ceremony, the Peruvian Nobel laureate spoke with the journalist warrior and Rosa beltran, writer and member of the Mexican Academy of Languages. There he reviews his literary career, from his beginnings to his participation in the Latin American boom, as well as a reflection on the politics of that time. Finally, he announced that he was writing a book of essays on the work of Benito Pérez Galdos.

Vázquez’s election comes a year after the controversy over the 2019 edition, when, in a public letter, dozens of writers criticized the gender disparity in the event’s panels (13 men and only three women ), among the finalists (four men and one woman), and on the jury (four men, one woman). Given this disparity, specify the signatories, it is not surprising that during the three biennials organized previously – 2014, 2016, 2019 – the winners were men.

“It is unacceptable that in the 21st century, in the midst of demands for equality, an event such as the Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Biennial is held without a gender perspective,” said the letter signed by writers such as Mariana Enriquez, Liliana colanzi, Claudia Piñeiro, Rosa Montero O Juan Villoro and that he also demanded that the organizers “strive to resolve this historic inequality which has condemned women to a place of subordination and silence.”

“There are very good writers in Latin America. These days it has been very interesting to see Latin American writers speak with great conviction on literary issues and women’s issues as well. I think some kind of dam broke. When I was young there was a prejudice against women writers, but today it is gone. Women are present in the literary world and occupy places of great importance. I think both writers and readers have lost, hidden, the prejudices they had against women writers. As in the rest of the world, in France or in the United States, more and more women writers are emerging and who also have a special importance and not simply because of being a woman ”, declared the author of Conversation in the Cathedral and The city and the dogs, among so many other novels.

The Vargas Llosa Biennale, an event that has been taking place since Thursday under the slogan “Literature, the last refuge of freedom”, took place through eight panels in which the authors participated in person and which can be seen on the account Facebook.

Among the authors who participated in these meetings at the University of Guadalajara are the five finalists and 30 other writers such as the Peruvian Santiago Roncagliolo, the Argentine Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and the Colombian Santiago Gamboa.

The first two editions of the Biennale were held in Lima, Peru. In 2018, the Vargas Llosa Chair and the University of Guadalajara Foundation signed an agreement for the Biennale to be headquartered, in its subsequent editions, in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, with the support of FIL Guadalajara in the organization. The first edition of the competition, in 2014, fell on Forbidden to enter without pants (Seix Barral), from Spanish Juan Bonilla; in 2016, on the site If you saw yourself with my eyes (Alfaguara), from Chilean Carlos franz, and in 2019 —the first edition held in Guadalajara— in The night (Alfaguara), from Rodrigo Blanco Calderon.

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