Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi receives the highest award in Spanish literature

An exemplary career spanning half a century led Uruguayan author Cristina Peri Rossi to receive the Miguel de Cervantes Award -in its 46th annual edition-, which highlights the best of Spanish-language literature around the world.

Cristina Peri Rossi is the sixth female writer to receive this award and the third Uruguayan after Juan Carlos Onettti (1980) and Ida Vitale (2018).

The Spanish newspaper El País highlighted that the author, in the exercise of her craft, crossed all genres and that among her latest titles are a book of short stories -Los amores equivocados (Menoscuarto)-, a collection of poems -Las replicantes (Cálamo)- and an anthology of verses -La barca del tiempo (Visor)-. To these she added in 2018 a novel: Todo lo que no te pude decir (Todo lo que no te pude decir (Menoscuarto), "which brings together, precisely, two of the constants in the work of the new award-winner: love (in its most passionate and homoerotic aspect) and exile," the media published.

"In my life I've always had to play it down, although I haven't been understood; if I don't do it that way, if I don't relativize things, I get very scared," said Peri Rossi in an interview with El País.

"That de-dramatization has been one of the instruments with which she built the work that the jury has praised for the 'exploration and criticism of her writing,'" the media outlet assured.

Candidates for the Miguel de Cervantes Prize are presented by the plenary of the Royal Spanish Academy, by the Academies of Language of the Spanish-speaking countries and by the winners of past editions. Around thirty candidates are presented each year. The prize, which enjoys enormous prestige, cannot be awarded posthumously and is endowed with 125,000 euros. It takes its name from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of what is considered the greatest work of Castilian literature, Don Quixote de la Mancha.

As Spain's Minister of Culture, Miguel Iceta, explained when announcing the decision, the jury wanted to highlight how Peri Rossi's work focuses on "the condition of women and sexuality". He also stressed that this award recognizes the bridge between the two shores, through Spain and Uruguay, that the winner built with her work Un recordatorio perpetuo del exilio (A perpetual reminder of exile).

Cristina Peri Rossi is a literature professor, translator and journalist. She is considered one of the most important Spanish-speaking writers. Her literary work, translated into more than twenty languages, covers all genres: poetry, short stories, novels, essays and journalistic articles.

His work La nave de los locos (1984) is considered the most important Spanish-American novel after the Latin American Boom. In addition to the recent Cervantes Prize, he received the Vargas Llosa Prize for short stories, the Loewe Prize for poetry, the City of Torrevieja, the Don Quixote Prize of the Spanish Writers' Association, the Rafael Alberti Prize, the José Donoso Prize and the City of Barcelona Prize. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights elected her in 2008 as the writer who contributed most to the struggle for peace and justice in the Spanish-speaking world.