Eva Baltasar has won France’s Médicis Prize for Foreign Novel for Ocaso y fascinación, a brief and unsettling work centred on precarious living conditions and loneliness. The Barcelona-born writer’s novel was published in Catalan by Club Editor and in Spanish by Random House.
The story follows an educated woman trying to build a life in a major city. After losing both her precarious job and the accommodation she rents, she ends up living on the streets. She survives by cleaning the homes of wealthy people, gradually developing an obsessive bond with them. The novel incorporates gothic elements.
Baltasar has become one of the most prominent and widely read voices in Catalan literature since the unexpected success of Permafrost, an interior monologue about an isolated and suicidal woman that is currently being staged at Barcelona’s Espai Texas.
Her subsequent novels have included Boulder, about a merchant-ship cook who turns to assisted reproduction in Boulder, and Mamut, which follows a young woman who rejects society after feeling trapped by it. Boulder was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Baltasar has also recently published Peces, a novel about a toxic relationship between a writer and a travelling fish seller.
The Médicis Prize is one of France’s major literary awards and has been presented each autumn since 1958. Founded by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, it was created to recognise novels that stood outside dominant literary tastes and were overlooked by traditional prizes.
This year’s Médicis Prize for a French-language novel went to Philippe Vasset for Dans les grandes lignes, published by Flammarion, while Jean-Baptiste Del Amo won the essay category with Une éclaircie, from Stock. The winner of the Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, is due to be announced on Tuesday.
Sources: El País Cultura.