CARACAS – Colombian writer William Ospina was awarded the Romulo Gallegos International Novel Prize on Thursday for “El pais de la canela” (The Country of the Cinnamon), beating out 274 other works from a score of countries.In reading the jury’s verdict, reached unanimously, Argentine writer Graciela Maturo hailed the high quality of the entries and said of the winning novel – published by Norma – that “it is an interpretive reading of the first expeditions the Europeans made in the (hemisphere), with a strong orientation toward the present.”
Ospina told Efe Wednesday in presenting the novel at the Madrid Book Fair that it examines the Conquest of New World from the perspective of the mestizo son of a Spanish colonizer and Indian mother, adding that his purpose was to recover “the consciousness of the indigenous people regarding that cultural clash.”
The 55-year-old author, who said the Spanish explorers were motivated by the hope of exploiting the land for economic gain, namely cinnamon plantations, wanted the book to shed greater light on that period without reducing what happened to good versus evil.
The jury that chose Ospina’s work was presided over by Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska and also included Argentine writer Gabriela Maturo, Venezuelan essayist Humberto Mata, Cuban author Miguel Barnet and Venezuelan poet Enrique Hernandez De Jesus.
The biennial award will be handed out at a ceremony on Aug. 2 and consist of a gold medal and a 100,000-euro cash prize; the winning work also will be published in an edition that will circulate only in Venezuela.
The prize was created in 1964 by then-President Raul Leoni to honor the work of Gallegos, author of the regionalist classic “Doña Barbara” and Venezuela’s head of state for nine months in 1948.
Previous recipients of the award include Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the inaugural edition in 1967; Colombian Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Spain’s Javier Marias and Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes.
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