There is no newspaper in the world that has a journalist who has interviewed so many Nobel Prize winners for Literature. So clear and so impressive. This newspaper is La Vanguardia and the journalist is Xavi Ayén, current editor-in-chief of Culture. Xavi, with his calm and good-natured appearance of never having broken a plate, has interviewed 29 Nobel Prize winners in his usual place of residence. He has always done it with his inseparable photographer, Kim Manresa, with whom he has traveled the five continents since 2005 when they started this very complicated challenge.
Today you will be able to read in the Culture section the latest interview with the Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2021 Nobel laureate, in his single-family home in Canterbury. Of the living, only a few are missing who refuse to give interviews – not only to Ayén, to anyone – such as Bob Dylan (2016) or Alice Munro (2013). His record is unbeatable, although some journalist would like to start trying to match it now. When the day-to-day activity of the newspaper allows it (never before, for the record), Ayén plans to collect all the interviews of the Nobel Prize winners in an edition that will be published by Libros de Vanguardia and that will bear the title of Nobel Project.
The main characteristic of the interviews is that they are not limited to a routine of questions and answers, but that the writer is in his natural habitat and shows his places of residence or the settings that inspired his works of fiction. The first writer interviewed was Kenzaburo Oe (1994 prize winner) in Tokyo, who allowed himself to be photographed with his disabled son, and together they watched a television program in Spanish and then visited temples and sake bars. When they interviewed Gabriel García Márquez (1982 winner), he told them that he had stopped writing, which became a world exclusive for our newspaper.
Although it may seem easy, you have to be very stubborn and persistent to get all these interviews with such sought-after and inaccessible authors. The effort has been worth it.
