Madrid (EFE).- Three years after it was published, in September 2019, with translations into more than 40 languages, and 47 editions in Spanish later, the essay “El infinito en un junco” by Irene Vallejo has been awarded the Wenjin Book Award, a prize awarded by the National Library of China, a “very special” recognition.
This is the first book in Spanish to win this award, which means that her work continues to reap success despite the fact that she wrote it “without expectations” and “convinced” that it would interest “a few eccentrics in history and passionate about books”, the writer (Zaragoza, 1979) told Efe this Thursday.
“I am the first to be surprised by everything that has happened since then. I felt alone when I wrote it and I thought that this passion for books was in the minority, but I have discovered that there is a great community in all countries and there are many of us ”, she added.
Released in China last year
The recognition of the National Library of China, which this year has added its 18th edition, has been framed in the category of Social Sciences, “the same one in which ‘Sapiens’ (by Yuval Noah Harari) was awarded”, Vallejo has qualified .
In addition, of the 19 award-winning books in this edition, eight are non-fiction, and of these the only title translated into Chinese has been Vallejo’s, which was published in China in March 2022, specifically by Booky publishing house and with Li Jing translation.
“It is interesting because the territory of the essay, of historical or political reflection, is a particularly difficult terrain to penetrate: the effort to configure ideas and create frameworks for analysis is a territory where one can break through and there is not much projection for the essay in Spanish. . That is why this award is very special”, he declared.
Regarding China, Vallejo said that, although he could not go to collect the award, it is a place on which he would like to “work a lot”: “It is the country of the antiquity of books, because they invented paper and because the earliest movable-type printing press was invented by them, not Gütenberg.
“I would like to learn and be able to open my thinking to other cultures. I would like to go beyond that specialization and have a broader look at other countries”, she concluded.
Essay “on the contemporary world”
As he recalled, “The infinite in a reed” is an essay on the contemporary world, “although it is considered as a historical journey”: “Precisely, talking about the book is talking about all of humanity, because what the book has achieved is get in touch with the best and worst ideas of our ancestors. It is a victory against oblivion and destruction”.
About to travel to Buenos Aires and Uruguay, the woman from Zaragoza has recognized that the “vortex” of this work is “huge, precious, but very demanding”, so her readers still have to wait to read a new work.
“I am constantly traveling and I want to take advantage of it,” he said, “and the experience of finding readers from so many countries takes up most of my time: now I am collecting ideas.”