Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu has been named the winner of this year’s Feria Internacional del Libro Prize for Literature in Romance Language. The award comes with a USD 150,000 prize.

“The FIL Award is truly one of the most valuable (in all senses) literary awards that exist. I was in Guadalajara five years ago when Emmanuel Carrere received it. There must have been about a thousand people in the hall, all officials possible [in attendance]. It never occurred to me that I would be on their list of "ganadores," together with Nicanor Parra, Juan Goytisolo, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Claudio Magris, Enrique Vila-Matas, Emmanuel Carrere, Yves Bonnefoy or my countryman, Norman Manea, among many others,” Mircea Cărtărescu wrote on Facebook, cited by News.ro.

Cărtărescu started publishing in 1980, and his works have been translated into over 20 languages.

Antonio Sáez Delgado, a spokesman for the jury, said that the award went to Cărtărescu “because of his imaginative and overflowing prose that combines fantastic and realistic elements, specular fictions that investigate the construction of identity from a liminal and peripheral space in the European landscape.”

He also said that the Romanian author is “a multifaceted writer of maximalist style that is fully aligned with the tradition of world literature, questioning his readers all over the world from a dreamlike and existential point of view.”

radu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Mircea Cărtărescu on Facebook)