Pulitzer Prizes: two Argentines were distinguished in literature and photography

the argentine writer Hernan Diazbased in the US decades ago, obtained this Monday the pulitzer prize of Fiction for his novel “Fortuna” (“Trust”, in English) that days ago he presented in theto FandRiver of the Book of Buenos Airess, a work that, when published in English, broke records for sales and praise, including that of the former president Barack Obama and The New York Times newspaper, which listed it among the best books of 2022.

“Congratulations to Hernán Díaz”, wrote on his official Twitter account @PulitzerPrizes, the organization that administers Columbia University, which grants the prestigious awards and that Díaz won in the “Fiction” category, while another Argentine, photographer Rodrigo Abd makes up a team of seven photographers distinguished for their coverage of the war in Ukraine.

The novel by Díaz (Buenos Aires, 1973), who grew up in Sweden, where he went into exile with his family due to the civic-military dictatorship and spent a large part of his life in the US, was first published in English under the title “Trust” and then , last April, reached bookstores in Argentina thanks to the Anagrama label. The “reprint is already underway given the sales success in its first weeks,” the publishing house reported when announcing the prestigious award that the author won today.

“Fortuna”, the award-winning novel

“Fortuna” proposes what many consider a rare bird in the world of fiction: a novel about financial capital, which explores capitalism and the world of finance in an intertwined way through four different texts, where the voice and the idea of ​​fiction are articulated to think about the relationship between the power of narratives and the power of money.

to the success of the work, It is added that HBO is preparing its adaptation in series format with the actress Kate Winslet and with the author as one of its producers, although little can be said about the progress, as he told Télam during his visit to the country to present the novel in the Buenos Aires International Book Fair, in conversation with Graciela Speranza.

With a polyphonic structure, “Fortuna” is a novel and a world in itself, in which -in summary- a writer writes a novel about an important tycoon of the early 20th century in the United States, the tycoon seeks to write his own story , a writer unravels the threads of that story and a woman inverts the fictions in a story that plays with the truth.

“I am interested in the instability of fiction, its opacity, that resistance to being fixed in a stable definition. It is a form of truth. Our relationship with the world is mediated by stories. Fiction determines, shapes and permeates the way in which we We interact with the world, with others and with ourselves. the author had recounted during an interview with Télam.

In this sense, Díaz said that “money is a great fiction and the book explores it in many different ways. But money, despite being a fiction, governs and determines our lives in a decisive way, it is inescapable. We live within this fiction and for me it was really an epiphany, as a very tangible example of the place of fiction in the world”, said the author, who added that, in financial capital, “to use an Argentine word, there is a lot of chamuyo”.

The writer, who published an academic book on Borges and the novel “In the Distance”, had said that this novel was written thanks to grants from high-ranking families in the United States, “it is something that has worked in the West from the Middle Ages to the present, forever. It has to do with the asymmetry and disparity of where value has been placed in our society for centuries.”

Distinction

On the other hand, the Argentine Rodrigo Abd was a member of the Associated Press photography team distinguished for its coverage of the war in Ukraine, in the Breaking News Photography category, “unique and urgent images from the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the devastation of Mariupol,” in the words of the Pulitzer Prize organization.

In Abd’s photo, 70-year-old Nadiya Trubchaninova is seen crying kneeling next to the coffin containing the remains of her 48-year-old son during his funeral at the Mykulychi cemetery outside Kiev, Ukraine, taken on Saturday, April 16, 2022.

The Pulitzer Prizes -created by journalist Joseph Pulitzer, who bequeathed money to Columbia University- have been awarded since 1917 and are endowed with $15,000 for the winners in each category.