# Matanzas-born writer Luis Lorente won the poetry prize with Exceptional Beauty of Summer

**Date:** 02/01/2022

Casa de las Américas awarded the prizes corresponding to the 62nd edition of one of the oldest and most prestigious literary competitions on the continent.

In the novel category, the award went to Daughter of No One, by Argentine Javier Núñez. The jury, made up of Claudia Apablaza (Chile), Mayra Montero (Puerto Rico), Santiago Vizcaíno (Ecuador) and Dazra Novak (Cuba), highlighted "a good narrative touch, great handling of dialogue and narrates, in a cinematic tone, the dystopian story of two women who resist a harsh and cruel reality."

The Cuban Luis Lorente deserved the poetry prize for Exceptional Beauty of Summer. According to the verdict of Jorge Boccanera (Argentina), Rosa Chávez (Guatemala), Basilia Papastamatíu (Cuba-Argentina) and Santiago Vizcaíno, judges of this important category, the work shows "a profuse symbology that alludes to the amorous stay as well as to numerous moments of life, of characters from the history of Cuba, even from a revisited daily life. It is a meticulous record recreated by a singular memory, of virtuoso language, achieved atmospheres and excellent command of rhythm. This book also stands out for the strength and beauty of chained images that wind like a single and forceful poem."

For its part, Currency and Social Unrest in Cuba (1790-1902), by Spanish author José Antonio Piqueras Arenas, achieved the highest honor in the historical-social essay category.

"The work illuminates Cuban economic history in the turbulent scenarios that mark the splendor and crisis of the colonial model. The text delves, with rigor and based on profuse documentary and bibliographic material, into the complex relationship between capitalism and slavery, the class structure on the island and the forms of discontent among various groups against foreign domination. We thus witness a substantial contribution to the history of Cuba that, furthermore, offers important lessons for the present," state in their final considerations Carlos Aguirre (Peru), Mario Santucho (Argentina) and Yoel Cordoví Núñez (Cuba), who made up this jury.

The virtual call for this edition made it possible to receive a total of 1,611 works in the three competing genres. Forty-seven texts were preselected in the novel category, 41 in poetry and 52 historical-social essays. Likewise, the countries with the largest number of participants were Argentina, Cuba, Mexico and Colombia.

The ceremony for the 62nd edition of the Casa de las Américas Literary Prize took place tonight in the Che Guevara Hall of the institution.