Cuban receives José Nogales award with 'The Silent Film Pianist'

June 15, 2018

The Cuban writer Alberto Guerra received the XXIV International Prize for Short Stories José Nogales, granted by the Provincial Council of Huelva with the aim of promoting and encouraging literary production in the field of narrative, for his work 'The Silent Film Pianist'.

The Deputy for Culture, Lourdes Garrido, has emphasized that on the verge of reaching a quarter of a century, "in its prolific history, Spanish-language writers from more than 30 countries have contributed to making this literary competition, one of the most prestigious in the literary landscape, an international benchmark of the genre".

Alberto Guerra is the first Cuban to win the award, and the fifth Ibero-American writer to inscribe his name in the prize's roll of honor, "two Mexicans, two Argentines, and now, a Cuban".

Alberto Guerra "is a committed and multifaceted intellectual" they said upon presenting him with the prize.

They affirmed that "we congratulate a writer from across the pond, in the confidence that he will take away a good memory of our land".

The Prize Jury has considered "The Silent Film Pianist" as the best of the 457 short stories submitted to this edition.

The spokesperson, Juan Villa, has affirmed that this year's winning story "is probably the most complex, entertaining and effective machinery story that has ever won the prize in its already long history".

After enumerating some of the scenes narrated in the story, he has pointed out that "they form one of those frames, one could say so characteristically Cuban, of literature and Cuban cinema, an entire hallucinatory world, as Reinaldo Arenas would say, in just a few pages".

According to Villa, "in The Silent Film Pianist the borders between various planes of fiction mix until they produce a grotesque and excessive frame whose closure however ends up granting it perfect verisimilitude".

In this sense he concludes that despite its metaliterary appearance "it ends up becoming charged with humanity, a parade of losers struggling to survive, like in a Zola saga", despite the brevity of the story.

Alberto Guerra —who is also a professor and screenwriter— has stated feeling "moved" and grateful for this prize, which he dedicates "to José Nogales, blind and whom I have come to know as a result of this competition, to Bola de Nieve, a great of my country and great silent film pianist and to the Uruguayan Felisberto Hernández, also a piano accompanist for silent films".

The author of 'The Silent Film Pianist', who has explained the obstacles he encountered in getting the story sent from Cuba, declares himself a lover of his country and has had a thought "for my colleagues in Cuba, who overcome difficulties, like the optimistic people that we are, of people with spicy and double-meaning conversations, full of dancers and people who defend the identity of their culture".

For Alberto Guerra having written 'The Silent Film Pianist' "is already a prize, because the story is already done, and sooner or later someone is going to read it after it is published".