2023-10-16 08:20:33
Spanish writer Sonsoles Ónega has won this year’s Planeta Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world. As the jury announced on Sunday evening in Barcelona, the 45-year-old, best known in Spain as a television journalist, received the one million euro award for her historical novel “Las hijas de la criada” (The Housekeeper’s Daughters).
The novel tells the story of the Valdés family of entrepreneurs in mysterious Galicia and exotic Cuba in the first half of the 20th century. The focus of “Las hijas de la criada” is on fierce women who created a canning empire in their homeland in northwestern Spain. But it’s also regarding a terrible secret that shaped the women’s lives forever.
Her work is a tribute to maritime Galicia and to the “brave women who worked and fought at sea for a hundred years without any recognition,” said the visibly moved Ónega to the applause of those attending the award ceremony. She dedicated her award to “women writers with children.”
1,129 unpublished novels were submitted for the 72nd edition of the competition – more than ever before in the history of the Premio Planeta. There were almost 300 more than in 2022, when a record had already been registered. The second prize, worth 200,000 euros, went to the 23-year-old Spaniard Alfonso Goizueta for the book “La Sangre del Padre” (The Blood of the Father).
The Premio Planeta has been awarded annually since 1952 by the publisher Editorial Planeta for the best unpublished novel in Spanish. A special feature: The authors have to submit the manuscripts under a pseudonym, so that unknown authors also have a chance – and they were often victorious. The winners also include big names such as Mario Vargas Llosa, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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