The Documenta award jury has unanimously declared this year's call void. In a statement, the jury, made up of Jordi Cornudella, Albert Forns, Anna Punsoda, Èric del Arco and Eugènia Broggi, assures that they have not "know how to discover, among the originals presented, any book that reaches the minimum literary quality that characterizes the award history.
Del Arco explains that some thirty works have been presented this year and that an effort has been made to value them, but “taking into account the quality of the works awarded prizes in previous years, they were not up to the level. There are years when you have three and you can't reward everything, and this year we didn't see it”. The Documenta bookseller points out that this does not mean that all the works presented were very bad, but they did not reach a quality comparable to the history of the award, which in general has been maintained over the years: "I think that all the Documenta awards are defensible, even today, because they have a high level”.
Established in 1980 by the Documenta bookstore -since then it was only stopped in 1992-, you don't have to go far back to find other deserted calls, such as 2019, but the same thing had also happened on seven other occasions, in 1984, 1988, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2011. As of 2012, the book is published by L'Altra Editorial, whereas previously it was by Empúries. Throughout the history of the award, intended for authors under 35 years of age, it has been won by writers such as Jordi Coca, Alfred Bosch, Flavia Company, Sebastià Alzamora, Vicenç Pagès, Pau Vidal, Melcior Comes, Bel Olid, Alicia Kopf and Irene Solà. Last year, the winner was the novel Distòcia, by Pilar Codony.
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