The rain that fell on Epiphany was the first gift that Their Majesties of the East left in Barcelona, but not the last. Tonight, before leaving again for their exotic palaces, they made a stop at the Palace Hotel to go incognito to the literary evening organized every year by the Destino publishing house and in which the Nadal and Josep Pla prizes are awarded.
A tradition that is 80 years old, in the case of Nadal, since it was in 1944 when Carmen Laforet was proclaimed winner with Nada, her first novel. In the case of the Catalan award, the meetings date back to several years later, in 1968, with Terenci Moix being honored for Onades on a desert rock. The winners are now joined by César Pérez Gellida (Valladolid, 1974) and Jaume Clotet (Barcelona, 1974), who replace the current winners until now, Manuel Vilas and Gemma Ventura, both present at the ceremony.
Pérez Gellida did not hide the excitement of the moment when he finally had the Nadal prize trophy in his hands, worth 30,000 euros. “There are two words in the dictionary that have always caught my attention because of their meaning. One is joy and the other is thanks,” he assured those present and the members of the jury that this edition was made up of Inés Martín Rodrigo, Care Santos, Lorenzo Silva, Andrés Trapiello and Emili Rosales.
For this contest, the Valladolid author, behind hits such as Astillas en la Piel (2021) or Nos Grow Los Enanos (2022), presented himself under the pseudonym Keyser Söze and with the manuscript Black Orchids, a rural thriller that will reach the bookstores renamed Under dry land and which has an enigmatic yet seductive protagonist. It is about a widow who lived in Extremadura at the beginning of the 20th century and who marked the destiny of those who crossed her, coloring the path she walked with passion, blood and mud. The story begins with an investigation after her house caught fire. The agents are trying to find out what started the fire and what has become of her.
“It is a novel that has traveled with me for years in my head and that I wanted to tackle the moment I felt the maturity of the craft.” Its pages reflect “difficult times, a lot of poverty, large estates, despotism and hunger, a lot of hunger,” he detailed about the plot of the novel, which will hit bookstores on February 7.
The Pérez Gellida surnames have long resonated in literary circles and, more recently, in audiovisual circles, since last October the adaptation of Memento mori, the first part of the Verses trilogy, premiered on the Amazon Prime platform. songs and pieces of meat. Or, in other words, one of the strongest literary debuts of recent times, which has allowed the author to develop a solid career in the field of literature and become one of the most recognized Spanish crime novel writers in the world. Spanish literary panorama.
Directed by Marco Castillo and starring Yon González and Juan Echanove, the series was very well received by the public, and it does not rule out producing more seasons. This police thriller is set in her native Valladolid and begins when the body of a young woman with amputated eyelids appears. Inspector Sancho foreshadows a chain of homicides, and with the support of “Carapocha”, one of the greatest experts on serial killers, he follows the trail of corpses that Augusto, a sociopath with refined tastes, leaves around the city.
For its part, the 56th edition of the Josep Pla prize, endowed with 10,000 euros -and with the jury formed by Laia Aguilar, Marc Artigau, Montse Barderi, Manuel Forcano and Glòria Gasch-, was won by Jaume Clotet with The brotherhood of the fallen angel
The author, who had submitted himself for the award under the pseudonym Bernat Bosch – and with the provisional title of La misió –, recalled that as a journalist he is used to working as a team, but “the profession of a writer is another story, it is very lonely. . He has good moments and difficult moments.” “I am convinced that the Josep Pla award is very loved and long awaited by the public, and it is an honor to have won it,” he said upon receiving the award, and before remembering how his parents instilled in him a love of reading, as he tries to do with his daughters, reading to them every night, “as he would have done if he were not here today. Writing is important, but reading is even more so.”
Clotet has defined his novel as a "thriller with a historical basis that goes from the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem in the 13th century to the 21st", since it goes through several historical episodes with a plot that takes place in the present day and whose protagonists are a monk from Montserrat and a mossa d'esquadra. The novel narrates a mission in which a war is played between good and evil and that can put the foundations of the Catholic Church at risk. The plot begins in Acre, the Holy Land, in the year 1291, when a group of Templar knights flee the dying kingdom of Jerusalem and take with them the best kept secret of Christianity.
The author is not a debutant in literature, a common profile in the award – this is the case of the two previous winners, Gemma Ventura and Toni Cruanyes, although he has also favored established authors such as Maria Barbal in 2021 or, going further back , Robert Saladrigas in 2004–, although he has not been a prolific author either. In fact, his only solo novel is El càtar proscrit, with which in 2016 he won the Nèstor Luján prize for historical novels. Previously he had published another historical novel, Lliures o morts (Columna, 2012), in this case with David de Montserrat, and two years before he was co-author with Quim Torra of Les millors obres de la literature catalana (comentades pel censor) (A Contravent, 2010). He is also the author of a series of children's books and other popular titles.
Clotet, historian and journalist, began his professional career linked to the media and was head of Politics at Avui newspaper, as well as collaborations with other media. He has subsequently dedicated himself to institutional communication, either in the Ministry of the Interior, as deputy director of the Catalan News Agency or as general director of Communications of the Government of the Generalitat between 2016 and 2021, and is one of the thirty senior officials investigated for embezzlement following October 1, 2017.
Between good and evil, rain or drought, who won on Three Kings Day was the literary thriller.
