Natalia Litvinova, winner of the 2024 Lumen Novel Award for 'Lucirnaga': “I found the narrator's voice looking at the sea of ​​La Corua” | EUROtoday

Natalia Litvinova He has received the II Lumen Novel Award for his work Lucirnaga. The contest jury has awarded the Belarusian novelist for her “dazzling and moving voice”, expressed in a novel by which “poetry and story beat.”

The writers Ángeles Gonzlez-Sinde, Luna Miguel and Clara Obligado, the director of the Rafael Alberti bookstore in Madrid, Lola Larumbe, and the editor Mara Fasce co-form the jury and have defined that Lucirnaga He stands out for his “dazzling voice” and the “simplicity” of his prose, which is in flip a “difficult quality.”

Natalia Litvinova (Belarus, 1986) is a poet and editor who has lived in Argentina since 1996. From there, via a video name, she has confessed to being “stunned” by the results of the ruling. For her “Spain is a home”, so the award has particular “importance”.

Lucirnaga is the Belarusian author's first cousin, though she has beforehand cultivated the style of poetry and has printed a number of books, resembling Nostalgia is a burning seal (2020) o Soka, golden fingers (2022), amongst others. The first novel of Natalia Litvinova It is a narrative of battle and exile, a narrative of ladies and household ties that illuminates the lives “of children who are trapped in time,” the jury talked about.

The story is endowed with a retrospective look that observes the reflection of the previous and weaves with an expression soaked in lyric, typical of the poetry that works Litvinovathe thread that takes the reader from a lady's childhood to her maturity.

The characters of Lucirnaga They should look into the eyes of battle, depart Belarus behind, “the country that is breaking as a backdrop”, and train with luminosity “the resistance of women” who face a darkish time.

“I have had the novel in my head for ten years,” stated the creator. “It was born from the need to read my mother's notebook,” the creator stated whereas she defined her need to know the tales of her household, additionally immigrants, just like the characters in her novel. Lucirnaga It is, in actuality, a mirror: “In my family there are many silenced people, who believed that their story did not matter. But it was not just theirs, it was that of many people. It was the way of representing many and many,” he defined. Litvinova.

The jury has additionally valued the delicacy of the voice of Litvinova, which he claimed to seek out “looking at the sea of ​​La Corua”. Likewise, the historical past of Lucirnaga It is “told with care, with great care.”

The II Lumen Novel Prize is endowed with 30,000 euros and publication all through the Spanish-speaking territory. In this version, 549 manuscripts have been acquired from totally different nations. This award is the inheritor to the award organized between 1994 and 1999 by the editor Esther Tusquets.