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  • Cristina Morales National Narrative Award 2019

The jury of the National Prize for Spanish Letters, meeting today at the Ministry of Culture and Sports, has awarded Bernardo Atxaga the National Prize for Spanish Letters , corresponding to 2019, as reported by the Ministry this morning in a statement. The writer is currently considered one of the greatest references of the Basque narrative.

The jury has chosen the author "for his fundamental contribution to the modernization and international projection of Basque and Spanish languages, through a narrative poetry imbued which has combined in a way brilliant reality and fiction."

Atxaga was consecrated in 1988 with the book of short stories Obabakoak (1988), which received the National Narrative Prize in 1989 and was taken to the cinema by Montxo Armendáriz as Obaba in 2005.

The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, is endowed with 40,000 euros. It distinguishes the whole of the literary work , in any of the Spanish languages, of a Spanish author, whose work is considered as an integral part of the set of current Spanish literature.

Joseba Irazu Garmendia (Asteasu, Guipúzcoa, 1951) is known by the literary pseudonym of Bernardo Atxaga. He studied Economics at the University of Bilbao and Philosophy and Letters at the University of Barcelona. He is a member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language / Euskaltzaindia , since 2006, and a member of Jakiunde / Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, since 2010.

Most of his work, written and published in Basque, can be read in 32 languages . He is an author who cultivates all genres: novel, poetry, theater, essay, or children's literature, and has also written lyrics for songs by pop, folk and rock artists.

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