Eva Baltasar is at it again: now she is a finalist for the Médicis Étranger prize

BarcelonaA new international milestone for Eva Baltasar. Her penultimate novel, Ocàs i fascinació (Club Editor, 2024), is one of the nine titles shortlisted for the Médicis Étranger prize, one of the most prominent awards in the French literary scene, which is granted to the best translated novel of the year. In recent years it has been won by writers of international relevance such as Eduardo Halfon, Han Kang, Lidia Jorge, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, David Grossman, and Rachel Kushner. In 2003 it was won by the Barcelonan Enrique Vila-Matas, but since it was created in 1970, it has never been achieved by any author in Catalan. The only one who has been a finalist is Jaume Cabré, for the translation of Jo confesso, in 2013.

Eva Baltasar was already a finalist for the award in 2020 for the French translation of her breakout novel, Permagel (Permafrost). And later she achieved an even more important milestone, as a finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize for the English translation of Boulder in 2023. "We, her Catalan editors, surrender to an evidence: we are facing an author who is news well beyond the strict novelty of what she publishes," they state from Club Editor. A couple of weeks ago, in New York, Pedro Almodóvar announced that he wants to adapt Peixos, her latest book, just as he had already been interested in Boulder. " All this in the year that translations of her novels have taken Baltasar to Brazil, Italy, and France and that Permagel has premiered in the theater", they point out.

On November 2nd, the verdict of the Médicis will be announced. The authors competing withDéclin et fascination, and the translation from Catalan by Annie Bats (at Verdier), are the Romanian Lavinia Braniște, the American Laura Kasischke, the Japanese Masashi Matsuie, the Swedish Hanna Nordenhök, the Italians Alcide Pierantozzi and Michele Ruol, the Austrian Robert Seethaler, and the Colombian Juan Gabriel Vásquez.