Pilar Adón wins National Storytelling Award for ‘Of Beasts and Birds’

2023-10-23 14:35:16

The writer Pilar Adón has been awarded the National Narrative Award 2023 for ‘Of Beasts and Birds’, a work by “great originality, beauty, poetic richness and strength of language”according to the jury’s ruling made public this Monday.

The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Sports and worth 30,000 euros, is the fourth that Pilar Adón (Madrid, 1971) has received for this novel, published by Galaxia Gutenberg, after those from Crítica, the Francisco Umbral al Book of the Year and the Calamus Another Look.

The jury highlighted that it is a narrated story that “is as fantastic as it is close and recognizable. The work, written in an impeccable style that at times borders on lyricism, manages to immerse the reader in a disturbing, suffocating and dreamlike atmosphere.

Likewise, the jury has stressed that Pilar Adón “with his singular voice, outside of fashions and trendsand with a sublime capacity to imagine, he builds atmospheres and environments of extraordinary nature that are absolutely captivating.”

The story of ‘Of Beasts and Birds’ begins at the end of summer, when a woman drives in the middle of the night without knowing that she is approaching Bethany, an isolated house, almost a territory outside the world, an unknown place inhabited exclusively by women. who, however, do seem to know her. She hasn’t told anyone that she’s leaving or where because she doesn’t even know that her trip is going to be so long.

Adón is also the author of the novels ‘Las hijas de Sara’ and ‘Las efímeras’; the story books ‘The Submerged Life’, ‘Innocent Journeys’, ‘The Cruelest Month’, and the collections of poems ‘It Gives Pain’, ‘The Orders’, ‘Animal Mind’ and ‘The Hunter’s Daughter’. She has translated works by authors such as John Fowles, Penelope Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton.

The jury was chaired by María José Gálvez Salvadorgeneral director of Books, Comics and Reading of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and as vice president has acted Jesus Gonzalez Gonzalezdeputy director general of Promotion of Books, Reading and Spanish Literature.

The National Literature Prize in the Narrative category distinguishes a work written in this literary genre by a Spanish author, written in any of the official Spanish languages, published in Spain in its first edition in the previous year, and recognized in its previous edition to Marilar Aleixandre.