Debate about Samanta Schweblin’s a million euro prize | EUROtoday

The Aena literary prize for fiction, named after a Spanish airport operator, was already the discuss of the city earlier than the primary award ceremony: a million euros for a single e book printed in Spanish in 2025? That appears like insanity, however it’s a exactly calculated cultural-political gesture. A jury made up of acknowledged specialists ought to counter the purely industrial Planeta Prize, which can be endowed with a million euros, with one thing critical and reward literary high quality as a substitute of simply digestible novel fodder or TV recognition. Accordingly, the shortlist solely contained respected names.

Then final week it was introduced that the forty-eight-year-old Argentinian Samanta Schweblin would obtain the big prize cash for her assortment of brief tales “The Good Evil,” a e book that cemented the creator’s fame as one of the fascinating writers of the second and likewise obtained glowing evaluations in Germany.

But you might really feel it twitching once more right here and there: actually an entire million euros for 190 pages? In Spain they tried to not flip this right into a debate about envy, however everybody is aware of that hardly any artist can get by with out envy: solely awards that you just win your self enhance your status and guarantee financial independence.

The prize founder Aena, wherein the Spanish state has a 51 % stake, sowed the best doubt. Can state dough on this scale help the humanities? The main literary prizes are extra modest: the Cervantes Prize is endowed with 125,000 euros, the British Booker Prize with the equal of 57,000, and the French Goncourt with solely ten euros. In return, the energetic competitors that has dominated the cultural debate for weeks is driving up circulation. The small print is necessary for the brand new literary prize. Not one, however even two million go to literature.

The second tranche will go in the direction of buying the books of all 5 finalists, which can profit Aena workers, public libraries and people communities wherein Aena operates airports. Let’s go away apart the bus stations, that are additionally needed: ​​by way of a facet route, the state spends cash on what Aena boss Maurici Lucena calls “social sustainability”. Spain’s operas and NGOs additionally obtain one thing from this pot. And the creator Samanta Schweblin? She is a worthy winner.

Sixteen years in the past, in a billiards café in Buenos Aires, she instructed us about her methods for locating time to put in writing in an costly, inflation-plagued metropolis. She has been telling her darkish tales since she was a baby. She then moved to Berlin, lived off her financial savings and, with the utmost consistency, designed a literary universe of “disturbing beauty,” because the jury mentioned in its assertion. It now reaches its viewers in 25 languages. There are extra reprehensible methods to spend one million euros.