Carlota Gurt wins the Anagrama Books prize with a "furious and tender" novel

Barcelona"If you ask ChatGPT to define the work and style of Carlota GurtHe will tell her: “Her style is characterized by precise, yet intimate prose that invites reflection on feelings, loneliness, and the search for meaning in everyday life.” After reading The moors"This will confirm that, fortunately for her and her readers, Gurt's prose is much more than that," says Sergi Pàmies, one of the seven members of the jury for the eleventh Anagrama Books Prize – worth 12,000 euros – which has chosen Gurt's novel from among the 66 original works that define themselves as "Mixed"tour de force "narrative against the wastelands of the modern world, or how good fiction can prevail over reality." And just as he was about to elaborate on his interpretation, the Civil Protection alarm sounded, warning of torrential rains, and Casacuberta and everyone attending the press conference had to rush to silence their cell phones. "BK_S_!" exclaimed Gurt after bursting into euphoric laughter. "I set off this alarm myself." After a short pause, he offered a brief summary of the book:The moors It was born when I went to Sau at a time when the reservoir was at 2%. It's a novel about climatic, emotional, professional, and sexual drought through two characters, Fausto and Ramona, whom we follow in parallel until, improbably, they meet."

"When we lose our illusions, fiction allows us to recover them," Gurt continued. "I like a novel to have everything: tragedy, humor, lyricism, and even clumsiness. I've tried to ensure that The moors fulfills this objective." "Carlota's narrative game is characterized by irony, but at the same time we find characters that are absolutely believable," commented Mita Casacuberta.

Since her debut in 2020 with We'll ride all night (Bow), which deserved the Mercè Rodoreda short story prizeCarlota Gurt (Barcelona, ​​1976) has managed to arouse remarkable interest among readers thanks to her literary creativity – with novels such as Sole (Proa, 2021) and Biography of Fire (Proa, 2023) – and the forcefulness of his opinions, which conveys both from the articles toNow we read such as through theatrical monologues, as is the case of the recent A failed annihilation, in which she presents findings and reflections on female desire and libido throughout history. "When a woman has a relationship with a heterosexual man, her orgasms plummet."He stated last October, when he had already sent The moors at Anagrama, determined to redirect her literary career after three books for Grup 62 and trying her luck in young adult fiction with The theory of holes (Barcanova, 2024), which won the Guillem Cifre de Colonya Prize.

An unlikely encounter

Who truly lives the life they desire? How can we escape the inertia in our relationships with work, partners, our surroundings, family, and ourselves? These two questions lie at the heart of Gurt's new novel, set in Sau, on December 24th, during the recent—and, for now, over—drought. It is in this setting that Ramona and Fausto meet. She has arrived in Sau to spend two nights alone. He hosts a lunch with his colleagues as the head of the Sau intake: he does so with obsessive zeal, even though he can't stand her. "Ramona is prickly, unfriendly, and lives a rather privileged life," Gurt explained. "Fausto doesn't like his job, but his entire family has worked on the dam and the reservoir. He'd like to find a different future, but he can't quite bring himself to do it."

Ramona and Fausto are so different they almost resemble each other, perhaps that's why they feel a curiosity, "not spurred by love or sex." "I wanted to defuse this detail from the beginning: it's not the story of two people who meet and end up having sex," said Gurt. "The reason for their encounter isn't revealed until much later in the novel." The interplay between the real and imagined lives of both characters, the sparks of criticism and humor that both Ramona and Fausto unleash, and the author's fluid prose create a story that is "furious and tender," in the words of the jury, which also included Jordi Puntí, Imma Monsó, and Guillem Gisbert. "Both characters are very angry for different reasons: she, for example, is very burned out and has fantasies of destroying the world; Fausto awakens in me, more than compassion, tenderness, although he also has a touch of rage," the author affirmed. "The story ofThe moors "It has many dark moments, but it is heading towards the light."

Endowed with 12,000 euros, the Anagrama Prize has been, since its creation just over a decade ago, one of the most reliable indicators of literary talent, especially emerging talent: it has rewarded such outstanding books I sing and the mountain dancesby Irene Solà, and Napalm in the heart, by Pol Guasch, and has managed to place the controversial Best before, by Andrea Genovart, at the center of the literary debate thanks to the uninhibited integration of Spanish within the novel.