Menorcan author Natalia Castro wins the Anagrama essay prize for her assertion of the revolutionary power of the apocalypse.
'The Party at the End of the World' analyzes the two major crises of recent times: the economic crisis of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020.
BarcelonaNatalia Castro Picón (Menorca, 1989), professor of Spanish and contemporary culture at Princeton, has won the 53rd Anagrama essay prize with The end of the world partyThe book offers a hopeful reading of Spain's most recent past. Castro analyzes the two major crises of recent times: the economic crisis of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020, and all the conflicts that have occurred in between: the decline of democracy, the ecological crisis, the resurgence of fascism, racism, the war on women... Castro Picón analyzes interpretations of literature, film, music, the performing arts, and comics and asks what we're talking about when we talk about the end of the world.
"It's not another book about the end of history, but a vindication of the political nature of the imagination and a testament to the recovery of the apocalypse as a poetics of revolutionary ambition," the editorial highlights. "The synthetic and convincing exploration of novels and songs, of films and series imbued with an apocalyptic tone debunks the stereotype that the rhetoric of the end of the world inevitably leads to giving up everything for lost. It may be just the opposite: another beginning," the jury argued.
This is the first essay written by Castro Picón. She has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid and a PhD from New York University. She has also written the poetry collections Flashing headlights (Canalla Editions, 2013) and The same stone (Baile del Sol, 2016).
The prize, for which 170 original works were submitted, is worth 10,000 euros. This year's jury was composed of Jordi Gracia, Pau Luque, Daniel Rico, Remedios Zafra, and the editors Silvia Sesé and Isabel Obiols.