Leonardo Padura wins Pepe Carvalho award from Barcelona's BCNegra Festival

February 7, 2023

Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, author of the Tetralogy of the Four Seasons, The Man Who Loved Dogs and The Novel of My Life, was honored on Monday afternoon with the Pepe Carvalho award from Barcelona's BCNegra Festival.

The award will be presented on Thursday.

The jury (made up of Ana Abella, Lilian Neuman, Esteve Riambau, Rosa Ribas and Daniel Vázquez Sallés and Carlos Zanón) stated that "Padura's is one of the most prominent voices in current Latin American literature. A voice committed both to literature and to Cuba, the great protagonist of his works, whether in his detective novels or in his historical ones, genres in which he moves masterfully, which he hybridizes and transforms, to construct a work as Cuban as it is universal."

Padura, 2015 Princess of Asturias Prize winner, gave thanks and remembered Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, who passed away in 2003, and bookseller Paco Camarasa, the festival's first commissioner, also deceased.

Other winners of the Pepe Carvalho award have been Don Winslow, Joyce Carol Oates, James Ellroy, Donna Leon, Andrea Camilleri and Claudia Piñeiro.