On August 2, it was announced that the Italian writer Alberto Spiller had won the Juan Rulfo Fine Arts Award for First Novel for his book Bitter mezcalIt was not until this past Friday, September 13, however, that the award was physically presented to him.
It was through the National Coordination of Literature, in conjunction with the Secretariat of Culture of the state of Puebla, the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla that the award was given to the author born in Schio, Italy in 1977, who has been working for the media of the University of Guadalajara for years.
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During the award ceremony, Spiller said:
“First of all, through the eyes of Great authors who have revealed to my eyes a world and a literature that was still unknown to me.but they captivated me from the very first moment. And my work as a journalist, which opened the doors to corners of cities, towns and their inhabitants, to which, if not for that, I would have had difficulty having access.”
About your Bitter mezcalsaid that he tried to be a compendium and at the same time a tribute to the microcosm of the characters and events that he has been able to know closely. “That through corridos, chronicles and stories that border on legends, they strive to transmit and Keeping memory and history aliveand the stories, in places where there was otherwise no way to do it,” he added.
Héctor Romero Lecanda, deputy director general of Bellas Artes, highlighted, among other things, the journalistic language of the work. For his part, the director general of Publications of the BUAP, Luis Antonio Lucio Venegas, said that Spiller’s novel is a sombre and fascinating novel that invites us to explore to what extent reality can be bitter, and added that “This award is the beginning of a deep and lasting dialogue between literature and society.”.
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The work, in the words of the author himself, is:
“A kind of journey, in a double sense: a return trip of the protagonist (a disillusioned journalist who does odd jobs) to an abandoned land in a hypothetical north in search of a woman and, perhaps, a lost love; and also a journey into himself, to the depths of his fears and insecurities, from his personal historycaught between two countries, between the redemption of past guilt and the desire to find something of himself in a place where, he soon realizes, there is very little left for him, and where instead he encounters the violence and disillusionment in which towns, cities and their inhabitants are immersed.”
#ItsNews ✍🏻:
The present government of @SergioSalomonCin coordination with the @cultura_mxhe @bellasartesinba and the @IberoPueblaheld the award ceremony for the “Juan Rulfo Fine Arts Award for First Novel” 2024.
📰 pic.twitter.com/5SOD3qvYCG— Puebla Department of Culture (@CulturaGobPue) September 14, 2024
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2024-09-17 20:12:49