Seville (EFE).- The writer, playwright, screenwriter and film director Roberto Santiago, 54, has won the 18th edition of the Fernando Lara Novel Prize, endowed with 120,000 euros, with a thriller about the pharmaceutical industry entitled “The rebellion of the good”.
Known for the children’s literature series “Los Futbolísimos”, Roberto Santiago has explained, as soon as the jury’s decision was made public during a gala dinner held at the Real Alcázar in Seville, that with this novel he addresses a “moral crossroads”. which raises questions such as why 80 percent of the population in developed countries is overmedicated.
Santiago, supporter of the black novel of social denunciation
A supporter of crime novels who also denounces society, Roberto Santiago explained to journalists that “The Rebellion of the Good” also tries to reflect “the weariness of a large part of society and the desire to rebel against many things and even against the system itself.”
The action of the novel takes place between 2018 and 2019, safe from covid-19 and all that it has brought with it, but although the pandemic and its hardships, such as the consequent confinement, are not mentioned in the narrative that circumstance “flies over ” the entire work, as the author has pointed out.
“What is kindness?”, the author asked himself to point out that the title of the winning novel is not trivial and to quote his teacher in the crime novel genre, Simenon, when he stated: “For the most part of the occasions doing good is very frowned upon”.
Although he exclaimed “hopefully”, when asked about the possibility of the novel being taken to the screen, the author has indicated that he has not kept it in mind when writing: “Writing a novel is the closest thing to composing music; the voice is the most important thing, it is even above the plot and the characters”.
His previous and first novel for adults, titled “Ana”, in which he denounced the world of gambling, did serve as the basis for a television series, while the series of novels “Los futbolismos” has been the most pleasant of his life. career, having sold five million copies.
Author of 64 children’s and youth novels
“Introducing children to reading is something exciting; Making readers is the best thing that can happen to a writer”, this author of 64 novels for children and young people has affirmed, a genre that he, he has assured, he intends to continue cultivating.
Santiago has claimed to have spent six years documenting the world of pharmaceutical corporations -hence why he has described his novel as “a fiction based on data and very real facts”- before building a plot in which there are references to the use of guinea pigs. by these large companies.
On this matter, he recalled the legal proceedings against pharmaceutical corporations for having used entire towns in highly depressed areas of Africa in human experiments on new drugs.
The novel, which will hit bookstores on June 14, begins when the president of a large pharmaceutical corporation, who suspects that her husband is cheating on her with a younger woman, asks a detective who also works as a lawyer to investigate her husband, then her partner in the pharmaceutical company.
The woman will not be satisfied with the result of the detective’s first investigations, who will face a large corporation, and ends up asking her to “dig into her husband’s personal and professional life” because “she needs to destroy him.”