The denunciation of a gerontophobic and ageist society in L'edat dels viu (Univers) by Marc Bosch Oliveras has earned the Crexells prize of the Ateneu Barcelonès for the best narrative work in Catalan last year, endowed with 6,000 euros and which convened for the first time now 95 years ago.
"Sometimes I think that the greatest contribution we could make to the Earth would be to go extinct," she assures the author to justify her double dystopia, first with a Ciutat Jardí in which old age is behind us but suddenly collapses, and then on an island in Sant Pere where the old dissidents have ended up, who are dying inexorably.
"At a time of confusion like the present, science fiction is once again imposed because we live with a sensation of apocalypse," said the cultural vice president of the Ateneu, Lluïsa Julià after the announcement.
Valèria Gaillard, representing the jury -also made up of Francesco Ardolino, Anna Ballbona, Andreu Gomila, Eva Piquer and Lluïsa Julià-, has valued the "originality, irony, liveliness and a touch of fun" of a double dystopia "with apocalypse included and winks authors such as Manuel de Pedrolo or Pere Calders", and "a dialectic that is put into play between the individual and the community", in addition to highlighting "a complex structure but very well built with changing narrative points".
Bosch thanked that the award "gives a second life to the book and is recognition and validation of his career", and recalled that when he began to write, "with the pandemic over", he did "whatever he wanted, with the confidence of the editor”, Ester Pujol, who compared it to when you go to the hairdresser and say: “Do what you want”.
Regarding the novel, the writer, current head of studies at the Girona Writing Classroom, replacing the ill-fated Vicenç Pagès Jordà, insisted that "it is not a pandemic book." Graduated in Philosophy, she says that Bernard de Fontenelle's work The Republic of Philosophers or The History of the Ajaoians (Palamedes) passionated her, but she was also inspired by works such as Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, Gullivert's Travels by Jonathan Swift or Voltaire's Candid, with a bookmark of adventures and thought, with a subversion of philosophical theories, from a misrepresented Epicureanism to "Christianized Stoics passed through a kind of capitalism", to make a "critique of the manipulation of power". "It's a text that goes from illustrated references to pop ones," she points out, and explains that the island where the protagonist ends up is also called Isla Bonita and they sing Madonna's song of the same name as an anthem. For the writer, "it is a novel that deals with many topics, but it has an accessible style, it is not convoluted." She also expressed the wish that "the genre does not outweigh the literary will, with a clear commitment to language."
Bosch has also explained that before writing the book "I thought that I could not make a protagonist more miserable than that of La donut effervescent 2020), but seeing how it progressed, he saw that he was wrong, because his Elisa Neri sees how her perfect society is sinking and goes to another where everyone dies.
The prize will be awarded this Thursday afternoon in an act at the Ateneu in which Eva Piquer will interview the winner and the actress Carme Elias will read excerpts from the winning work.
Catalan version, here
