Eva Baltasar wins the Médicis Étranger prize

BarcelonaThe writer Eva Baltasar was awarded this Monday with the Médicis Étranger prize for the French edition of Ocàs i fascinació, translated by Annie Bats at the publishing house Verdier. Baltasar's novel thus becomes the first Catalan work to receive this award, which on previous occasions has recognized writers such as Milan Kundera, Julio Cortázar, Doris Lessing, Umberto Eco, Enrique Vila-Matas, Han Kang, and Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir. Granted since 1970 by a jury of ten French writers and literary critics, the Médicis Étranger is one of the most prominent awards in the French literary scene and is given to the best translated novel of the year.

At the traditional ceremony at the restaurant La Méditerranée, it was also announced this Monday that Philippe Vasset has won the Médicis prize for Dans les grandes lignes, published by Flammarion. In the essay category, Une éclaircie (Stock) by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo was awarded. The jury gave a special prize to Richard Zénith for the work Pessoa, l'oeuvre-vie (Seuil). Baltasar was already a finalist for the Médicis Étranger in 2020 for the French translation of her breakthrough novel, Permagel (Permafrost). "When we learned that Ocàs i fascinació made it to the deuxième sélection of the Médicis Étranger just as Permagel had already done in 2020, I remembered Slimani. And I thought: 'This time they will give it to her.' And they have given it to her," writes the editor of Club Editor, Maria Bohigas, in the statement announcing the prize. The editor also congratulates "our colleagues at Verdier and the expertise of Annie Bats, without whom a part of our literature would not be possible in French".

Ocàs i fascinació is the fourth novel by Eva Baltasar and it is starred by a woman who has no name and is alone in the world. After sharing an apartment with strangers and being kicked out of a rented room, she will have to live on the street for a few days. Her story presents to the reader a world in which the only way out of the suffocation caused by wild capitalism is madness. The Médicis Étranger adds to the long list of awards that Baltasar has received in recent years, with milestones as impressive as being a finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize for the English translation of Boulder in 2023. In the spring it arrived at the theaterPermagel, the first stage adaptation of a work by Baltasar. A month ago, in New York, Pedro Almodóvar announced that he wants to adapt Peixos, Baltasar's latest book, just as he had already been interested in Boulder. In parallel, Club Editor is preparing the landing of the Triptych —formed by Permagel, Boulder and Mamut— in the United States, under the FSG label.