Men who hide a corpse and girls who want to become a fern

BarcelonaFew literary prizes can boast 45 years of history like Documenta. "Our goal continues to be to find voices that are future proposals to enrich the Catalan literary panorama," says Èric del Arco, who has been a member of the Catalan literary community for 45 years. the Documenta bookstore promotes the award, together with La Otra Editorial. This year, and without intending to, the jury has ended up awarding two works instead of one: The screams, second novel by Víctor Recort, and A black cat in the garden, Irene Zurrón's debut in short fiction.

Both authors say they brought their books on the last day of the call for entries. "The only thing I didn't like was having to share the money," says Recort with a smile that she knows how to infect Zurrón with. Endowed with 5,000 euros – which this year will be 2,500 euros for each author – the Documenta has only been shared twice before: the first was in 1998, by Sebastià Alzamora and Vicenç Pagès Jordà; the second, in 2020, by'Irene Pujadas and Laia Viñas.

Víctor Recort (Sant Boi de Llobregat, 1990) tries to find time to write when he is not working at the Finestres bookstore –where he schedules events almost every day– and when his two children let him. "My books are always short because I have little time," he admits. Shortly after debuting with Game boy (Caballo de Troya, 2019), Recort decided not to write in Spanish anymore for personal and political reasons. "I'm not making a charniega claim or any nonsense of that kind," he says. His first novel, Airlift (Empúries, 2022), focused on the linguistic issue based on the reunion of two actors who had shared a sitcom successful decades ago. Television has also inspired the author again in The screams: the characters are a television presenter and two of the commentators who collaborate. "The phrase that sums up the novel would be this: three men must hide the corpse of a woman to maintain the reputation of one of them," he explains. "If we split hairs a little more, we could say that the book is a long opinion column, because the protagonist is a columnist and commentator who is also a father." Recort advances that the novel also addresses how the generation of men to which he belongs "still depends too much on elements of childhood such as superheroes, video games or the running "competitive". Behind this nostalgia mixed with the impossibility of growing there is "an enormous fear of the link".

The villages are not as idyllic as they seem

Irene Zurrón (Palma, 1990) makes her debut as a short story author with A black cat in the garden, but has previously published the children's novel The tribe in the middle of the mountain (Tándem, 2021) and has dedicated the doctoral thesis, Taking root in a crack, to suicide in the narrative of Mercè Rodoreda. One of the eight stories in the book with which he has received ex aequo The Documenta starts precisely from a novel by Rodoreda. "If in How much, how much war Her protagonist wants to be a plant to avoid having to make decisions. In one of my stories there is a girl who would like to become a fern, she says. Since my story takes place in Mallorca, instead of becoming a plant, that girl ends up working in a souvenir shop. In another story by Turtle shell, "a woman who has only been with her partner for a short time becomes obsessed because an old sex video in which she appears could spread."

Although Irene Zurrón has lived in Barcelona for seven years, where she is currently struggling to get a permanent place at a public university –"It is difficult and exhausting," she admits–, many of the stories are set in small towns. "Now there is a certain idealization of the natural world," says the author. "It seems that returning to live in the village implies reconnecting with your roots in an idyllic environment. In the villages, the dynamics can be very perverse." Irene Zurrón talks about it with elaborate, detailed prose, often imbued with lyricism.