Javier Cercas receives the Taofen award in China for best foreign novel

Javier Fences

Javier Cercas, author of El impostor, awarded the Taofen prize.

Contests, whether national or international, are the best way to discover great talents, as filters in which a jury elevates that novel, short story, essay or any other narrative work to the category of work.

The last case is that of Javier Cercas, an author born in the town of Ibahernando, in Cáceres, and who has just won the Taofen prize for Best Novel awarded by the People's Literature Publishing House in China.

The best thing is that it is about first Spanish author to do so.

Do you want to meet Javier Cercas, winner of the Taofen prize in China?

An Extremaduran in China

A few hours ago, the Extremaduran author Javier Cercas (1962) has received in Beijing the Taofen prize, one of the most prestigious in the eastern country and delivered by Casa Editorial Literatura del Pueblo.

His novel, The impostor, published in November 2014 by the Random House publishing house, has prevailed over five other titles: Japan, Russia, France, Holland and Germany.

In turn, the book has recently been adapted into Mandarin and a first Chinese edition of 5 copies, resulting in great acceptance by the public and, especially, by a critic who has known how to appreciate a work at least far removed from oriental culture and the history of China.

Or maybe not so much.

Universal characters

The impostor

The impostor cover

In El impostor, Cercas tried to adapt the life of one of the most controversial characters in recent years with regard to the historical memory of our country: the former trade unionist Enric Marco Batlle, President of the Amical Association of Mauthausen and other camps located in Catalonia whose purpose was to reunite Spanish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War

Batlle got this position after serving as Secretary and President of the National Confederation in Catalonia, a position that he took advantage of to ensure that, at the time, he had also worked in a Nazi concentration camp, specifically in that of  Flossenburg, scene of which, "coincidentally", there were no Spanish survivors.

After various investigations that pointed to Batlle as a fake, the alleged survivor confessed his lie in 2005, claiming that he had worked in Germany during that period as part of the labor force that emerged after the fascist treaty of Franco and Hitlet but that he had never been an exile in France and much less used as a prisoner of the Nazi horde.

Javier Cercas has been in charge of adapting Batlle's story, which has been appreciated by the Chinese public as it is a universal story in which «the art of the forger as a way of being accepted by others is a position that can be appreciated by any culture"Affirmed Cercas, who added that" Literature is a public danger for those who write it but also for those who read it. It does not serve to reassure but to disturb, not to stabilize us but to revolutionize us, not to confirm our certainties but to dynamite them«.

During the event, the Mandarin translator of the novel, Cheng Zhongyi, stated that «With The Impostor, Chinese readers will find our images in reverse«, Or a subtle way of denouncing the manipulation of which China has been the victim on numerous occasions in which the media and governments have tried to camouflage some of the most recent events in its history, such as the example of the slaughter of Tiananmen occurred in 1989 and in which the government committed genocide by annihilating thousands of protesters who demanded the economic liberation of the country after the Mao era

Although Cercas has not wanted to delve too deeply into his opinion about this "reprehensible" China, many associate its character as a silenced nation with the main reason with the award to a work of which, without a doubt, we will hear even more talk about during the years. next months.

Javier Cercas has received in China the Taofen award for best foreign novel of 2015. The play, which encompasses an episode in Spanish history forged over more than sixty years, ended in 2005 after Batlle's confession as a false Spanish hero.

Have you already read The Impostor?


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