Raúl Quinto wins the 2024 National Narrative Prize | Culture | EUROtoday

The author Raúl Quinto, born in Cartagena in 1978, has been awarded the 2024 National Narrative Prize for his work Shadow King’s Hammer (Jekyll & Jill), a ebook that narrates the mass arrest of the Gypsy inhabitants that befell on July 30, 1749, underneath the reign of Fernando VI and by order of the Marquis of La Ensenada. There are those that think about it a failed extermination mission: The Great Raid. “It is an event that conditioned the lives of the entire Roma population at that time, but that continues to this day,” says the writer. The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, is value 30,000 euros. The work had already obtained the National Critics Award and the Cálamo Otra Mirada.

The jury highlighted the work “for being a brilliant proposal that, standing on the border between genres, creates an original fictional essay of historical interpretation. With a style rich in nuances, lavish in metaphors and magnificent descriptions, Raúl Quinto presents a vigorous portrait of the period in which he accurately dissects the practices, conflicts and rites of the State of the Old Regime and the attempted extermination of a minority like the gypsy people.”

“People want to know things about the past to understand the present,” says Quinto, who has a level in Art History and a professor of the self-discipline in Almería. He realized concerning the story of The Great Raid from a file in a specialised journal and was shocked to not know concerning the occasion and, what’s extra, that it didn’t seem within the college curriculum. “I teach history, and I teach the 18th century, to Fernando VI and the Marquis of La Ensenada, but I didn’t know anything about this and I couldn’t find it anywhere. And when I don’t understand something, I try to unravel the knot from literature,” says Quinto.

He was dealing with an extermination try that lasted 16 years and had critical penalties on the connection between payos and gypsies. An tried extermination that befell underneath a reign that presumed to be enlightened: 1000’s of gypsies have been pressured to work in arsenals and shipyards, they have been imprisoned and disadvantaged of their property. “The Great Roundup is still one more, the most notorious, of around 250 laws enacted since 1499, under the Catholic Monarchs, aimed at the disappearance of gypsies. His presence bothered him, his way of being in the world. That is a constant, and not only in Spain,” says Quinto. In Wallachia, in response to what he says, the slavery of the Gypsy ethnic group was authorized till the nineteenth century. This ethnic group has usually been thought-about an “infectious root.”

A ebook that has grown little by little

The writer was caught unexpectedly by the decision from the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, doing house responsibilities on his time off. I knew that the nationwide awards have been being given, however I did not know that the Narrative Award was falling immediately. He says, very blissful concerning the “miracle”, that this ebook has been rising little by little, in literary circles and studying golf equipment, with out an explosion of gross sales or a media phenomenon, however successful awards, such because the aforementioned Cálamo Otra Mirada and Nacional de the Criticism. Curiously, Pilar Adón had gained the identical awards final 12 months together with her work Of beasts and birds (Galaxia Gutenberg), along with the Francisco Umbral. Slowly, step-by-step, Shadow King’s Hammer It is in its fourth version.

“It is a risky book in which I have put, literary, all the meat on the grill,” says the winner, “and that is advancing against the logic of the market.” The jury has indicated that Shadow King’s Hammer It is “a round novel, with great stylistic effort and fascinating games of perspectives that sheds light on a silenced and quite unknown part of the history of Spain.”

“I am a rare UFO in the world of narrative,” says Quinto, who comes from poetry, the place he has printed books comparable to The pores and skin of the watchman (DVD, 2005), The flower of torture (Renaissance, 2008), white noise (The Beautiful Warsaw, 2012), The damaged tongue (La Bella Varsovia, 2019) or the pocket book Sola (The Beautiful Warsaw, 2020). Hybrid narrative has additionally been given as Idioteca (El Gaviero, 2010), Yosotros (Trojan Horse, 2015) and Son (La Bella Warsaw, 2017). “This book is published by a very small publishing house, Jekyll & Jill, which has to compete for the space occupied by large groups in bookstores. These awards make me happy because they make me see that not all the cod is sold,” says Quinto.

In earlier editions, the award has acknowledged authors such because the aforementioned Pilar Adón, Marilar Aleixandre, Xesús Fraga, Juan Bonilla, Cristina Morales, Almudena Grandes, Fernando Aramburu or Cristina Fernández Cubas, amongst others.