Romulo Gallegos Novel Prize 2009

[Daniel del Real]

Colombian writer William Ospina won today the Romulo Gallegos Novel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in Latin America given every two years for a novel published in that period of time.
This award has been granted to prestigious writers like Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Javier Marías, Gabriel García Márquez, Roberto Bolaño and Fernando del Paso.

[baiju raj]

is ospina translated into english?

[Daniel del Real]

I don't think so. This is only his second novel, but after this prestigious award it won't take long to be translated.

[Eric]

Taking a look at the Spanish-language Wikipedia entry (I couldn't find one in English), he hasn't written many novels (only two), or poetry (three collections), but his forte appears to be books of essays and literary criticism.

The Wiki says that he has written essays on Byron, Poe, Tolstoy, Dickens, Dickinson, A Thousand and One Nights / Arabian Nights, the Mexican writer and diplomat Alfonso Reyes, the Colombian writer and philosopher Estanislao Zuleta, Arab literature and Macbeth.

[Daniel del Real]

That's right Eric, his only novel before Cinammon Country is named Ursúa and it is based on the history of Spanish conqueror Pedro de Ursúa, founder of the Colombian city of Pamplona. The novel has been called as a very dramatic testimony of colonization.
Another interesting fact is that he has a book of poems named With who Speaks Virginia Walkint to the Water? Sure the title sounds very appealing although I don't know how good could be his poetry.

[obooki]

I have a book in English by Ospina - it's called Too Late For Man (Es Tarde para el Hombre). I tracked it down because he won the Romulo Gallegos, which has an impressive list of winners generally. It is indeed a book of essays.

My opinion? - it is utter drivel, complete ill-conceived, its every argument full of the most marvellous straw men and contradictions.

As an example, he says in one essay:

"The idea of progress was the light of the nineteenth century. All believed in it, from the foolish to the wise."

He wants, you see, to put forward the view that it is only recently - in the last few years - that we've become suspicious of "progress".

Unfortunately, the most casual look through nineteenth-century opinion (particularly its writers) can't help but give the view that an awful lot of people back then were very suspicious of "progress".

Indeed, the very epigraphic of this collection of essays is the following, from Thomas de Quincey, written in 1845:

" ... it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be expected,) or, which is happily more probable, can be met by counter-forces in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely human, left to itself the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy; for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor."

But then, if you like your fashionable post-modernist sort of philosophy - the kind where the author just rambles amiably and aimlessly along, saying lots of things which at the time seem quite interesting but which upon reflection are confused, devoid of meaning and lacking in any sort of intellectual rigour, by all means go out and buy it.

On the other hand, just because a man writes dreadfully essays, doesn't mean he can't write good novels.

[Daniel del Real]

Very interesting view of his essayistic works Obooki. Now more than ever I want to read Cinnamon Country, specially because both of his novels have a lot to do with history, Latin American collonialism specifically.