There is no newspaper in the world that has a journalist who has interviewed so many Nobel Laureates in Literature. So clear and so impressive. This newspaper is La Vanguardia and the journalist is Xavi Ayén, current editor-in-chief of Cultura. Xavi, with his calm appearance and the fact that he has never broken a plate, has interviewed 29 Nobel laureates 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, in the Culture section, you can read the latest interview with the Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2021 Nobel Prize winner, in his single-family home in Canterbury. Of the living, there are only a few who refuse to grant 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, to be recorded in the minutes), Ayén plans to collect all the interviews of the Nobel laureates in an edition that will be published by Libros de Vanguardia and that will bear the title of Proyecto Nobel .
The main feature of the interviews is that they are not limited to a question and answer routine, but 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 award) in Tokyo, who allowed himself to be photographed with his disabled son, and together they watched a TV program in Spanish and then visited temples and sake bars. When they interviewed Gabriel García Márquez (1982 prize), 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 obstinate and persistent to get all these interviews with such well-known and inaccessible authors. The effort was worth it.
