There are only a few hours left for readers to find out who will be the next Planeta award winner and also their finalist. As happens every year, there is a lot of expectation for the contest, which will be held this Sunday in Barcelona.
In this 72nd edition, the participation record has also been broken, with a total of 1,129 novels, 461 more than the last call. The origin of the novels received this year is very diverse: in addition to Spain, with 482 works, South America stands out with 309. The rest of the originals come from North America, with 96; Central America, with 33; the rest of Europe, with 20; and one from Africa.
As happens every year, the awards ceremony is held on October 15, the feast of Saint Teresa, the name day of the founder's wife, María Teresa Bosch, who died in 2003.
The meeting will be at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), in Barcelona, where personalities from Spanish culture will meet to meet the winner.
Last year, the award went to Luz Gabás with the novel Lejos de Luisiana, with which she invites the reader to travel to the end of the 18th century, when Mississippi and New Orleans went from being French to Spanish territory. Cristina Campos was a finalist with Stories of Married Women, which dissects the romantic lives of three friends who work at a women's magazine.
Since the 70th edition, the Planeta Prize has the largest financial award in the world, surpassing the Nobel Prize. The winning novel is awarded €1,000,000 and the finalist novel is awarded €200,000. The first to receive these amounts were Antonio Mercero, Agustín Martínez and Jorge Díaz, the screenwriters behind the pseudonym Carmen Mola.
It is a literary contest open to all the public of legal age. The legal bases of the award are published every year on the Planeta website and it is important to follow them to the letter to be able to enter the competition and know all the requirements, such as the length of the work, and they can be consulted. It is important that the manuscript is original and unpublished in the Spanish language.
Although the gala is not open to the public, yes, you can follow it live via streaming. The ruling will be announced this Sunday the 15th starting at 11:15 p.m. You can also follow minute by minute on the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts of @Planetadelibros and Instagram of @PremioPlaneta.
The titles and authors (or their pseudonyms) of the works are: Sexudario, by Mar de Mármara (pseudonym); Dexados, by Lorenzo Fernández Prieto; The King of the East, by Luis Parterrío (pseudonym); See them coming, by Francisco-José Torres Alborch; The reunion, by Tintaleve (pseudonym).
Tears at the bottom of the sea, by Clara Isabel Aguilar Esteban, have also been finalists; Li Qingzhao, by Pilar González España; Autumn without you, by Gabriela Monte (pseudonym); Another Heaven, by Elizabeth Gothelf; and Shadows on the wall, by Karla Munich (pseudonym).
There are several people in charge of evaluating the merits of the works submitted in this edition. The members in 2023 are: José Manuel Blecua, Fernando Delgado, Juan Eslava Galán, Pere Gimferrer, Carmen Posadas, Rosa Regàs and Belén López, director of Editorial Planeta and secretary of the Jurado con voto.
