The Uruguayan writer Fernanda Trías (1976) has won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prize for the second time in four years. The author of pink dirt (Random House, 2020), the book, is now making its way with his new novel, the mount of furiesfrom the same publisher, in which it tells the story of a woman who lives “on the side of the mountain, between the descending mist and the fertile foliage,” and in whose garden, one day, a body appears, and then another, and so on, according to the synopsis. The recognition jury, made up of Giselle Etcheverry Walker, Patricia Córdova Abundis and Julián Herbert, has highlighted “the rhythm of poetic language” of a work that “is rooted in the Latin American narrative tradition, reconfiguring it through an exceptional feminine point of view full of findings and nuances.”
“The hermit life of a woman, her stark vision of eroticism and the emergence of sinister human violence on her stage,” continues the committee’s assessment, “serve as the framework for a story that reconciles female genealogies with the invisibility of work, the ruin of the urban with the longing for the rural world, the joy of solitude with the drive of desire.” The prize, awarded unanimously, is worth $10,000 and will be awarded on December 3, during the Guadalajara International Book Fair, which this year will have Barcelona as the guest of honor.
The jury has also decided to give an honorable mention to the Argentine writer Adriana Riva for her novel Ruth (Seix Barral), which has highlighted the way of addressing “with acuity and sensitivity the margins of the literary representation of female old age.” Furthermore, the examiners complete, “it demystifies old age and sorority with light and luddism through an endearing character.”
Fernanda Trías is a narrator, translator and teacher. Among his publications are The roof, The invincible city y You will not dream flowers, although it was the arrival of pink dirt the one that earned her the greatest recognition: the Uruguayan National Literature Prize (2020), the Bartolomé Hidalgo de la Crítica (2021) and the aforementioned Sor Juana, in addition to placing her as a finalist in the National Book Awards from the United States. In this science fiction novel, the Uruguayan imagines, before the Covid pandemic made it real, a post-apocalyptic scenario in which a woman and a child live locked in a tiny apartment to avoid contact with a strange red substance that is transmitted through the air and that can cause their death. Then the jury highlighted his ability to “bravely look into the void,” but also to “tenderly treat the central themes of the definition of humanity, such as illness, uncertainty, empathy and pain.”
Trías joins, for the second time, a list of award winners inaugurated by exile writer Angelina Muñiz-Huberman and which has among its ranks great names, such as the Mexicans Elena Garro or Margo Glantz, the Nicaraguan Gioconda Belli or the Spanish Almudena Grandes. This time it falls for the second consecutive year in the southern cone, after it won the award last year. Argentina is, with nine awards, the country that has shone the most along with Mexico in this distinction. The Uruguayan has not yet made a statement, but has posted on her social networks that she feels “very moved” by this recognition, which every year praises the work of a writer from the Spanish-speaking world.
