Premio Planeta 2010

[Stiffelio]

The winner of the very lucrative Premio Planeta (601,000 Euros) is Eduardo Mendoza, for his novel Ri?a de Gatos (Catfight).

This is the announcement on El Pa?s.

"Tenemos que asumir la Guerra Civil entre todos" ? ELPA?S.com (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Tenemos/asumir/Guerra/Civil/todos/elpepucul/20101016elpepucul_1/Tes)


Wiki info about the author:

Eduardo Mendoza Garriga - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Mendoza_Garriga)

Pretty impressive credentials. Has any read him?

[Stewart]

Pretty impressive credentials. Has any read him?
I've read No Word From Gurb (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/european-literature/12032-eduardo-mendoza-no-word-gurb.html), which was one of the few novels out there to have me laughing as I read it. Also saw him at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2008, where he was paired with Carmen Posadas. He seemed the jolly sort.

[pesahson]

I've only read his El asombroso viaje de Pomponio Flato (I've read it in Polish but it wasn't translated into English yet so I'm giving the original title). It was funny, imaginative. I would reach for Mendoza again if I was looking for some light read.

[Bubba]

I read La verdad sobre el caso Savolta a few years ago and liked it well enough to check out another Mendoza book (I think it was El misterio de la cripta embrujada), which, for some reason, I returned to the library all but unread. If the Savolta book is representative of Mendoza's work, I'd say that it's left-leaning (surprise), but not intrusively so, and that it occupies a kind of no-man's land between highbrow literature and genre (crime) fiction; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it flummoxes the marketers.

And 601,000 euros is a shitload of simoleons. Are you sure? And why the extra thousand euros? Six hundred thousand isn't enough? Are the winners of the Premio Planeta always published by a Planeta imprint?

The winner of the (US) National Book Award in fiction gets only $10,000, with the debased US dollar barely qualifying now for hard-currency status. Just as well, I suppose, as the novel that gets the National Book Award is almost always unadulterated crap.

[Corswandt]

I've only read his El asombroso viaje de Pomponio Flato (I've read it in Polish but it wasn't translated into English yet so I'm giving the original title). It was funny, imaginative. I would reach for Mendoza again if I was looking for some light read.

By coincidence Pomponio Flato was very recently released in Portuguese. I may pick it up if I find myself in the mood for a trifle.

[Manuel76]

I only read La aventura del tocador de se?oras (The Adventure of the Powder Room), which was as mediocre and coarse as its title.

I think it's not one of his best works and other earlier novels I hope were much better.

But having read that one I just thought one of those left-wing friends of "El Pa?s" newspaper (as Javier Marias)...

[Daniel del Real]

And 601,000 euros is a shitload of simoleons. Are you sure? And why the extra thousand euros? Six hundred thousand isn't enough? Are the winners of the Premio Planeta always published by a Planeta imprint?


I think they have to be published by any of the many editorial groups that Planeta owns. They're not that clear in the wiki link.


El Premio Planeta de novela es un premio literario comercial (los concedidos por editoriales) que se concede desde 1952 a la mejor obra in?dita elegida por editorial Planeta (perteneciente al Grupo Planeta). Fue creado por Jos? Manuel Lara Hern?ndez.


Personally I'm not fond of novels or writers that wins this prize. I prefer the Alfaguara premio de Novela. However Mendoza seems to me a good choice, one I've never read and that I may give him a shot.

[Daniel del Real]

Here's an article about why Mendoza, an unlike choice, won the Planeta Prize. I hope this tendency stays so we can have less commercial and more good literary authors getting this prize.

Ganador del Premio Planeta 2010: Eduardo Mendoza | Lecturalia Blog (http://www.lecturalia.com/blog/2010/10/19/ganador-del-premio-planeta-2010-eduardo-mendoza/)