Cuban writer Padura wins Black Novel Award

Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, 2015 Princess of Asturias Award winner, today won the Pepe Carvalho International Black Novel Award at the BCNegra Festival in Barcelona. When announcing the ruling, which recognizes Padura's career, the jury highlighted the author of the detective saga Mario Conde, as "one of the most prominent voices in current Latin American literature."

A 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 build a work that is as Cuban as it is universal, wrote the jury chaired by Carlos Zanón and also made up of Ana Abella, Lilian Neuman, Esteve Riambau, Rosa Ribas and Daniel Vázquez Sallés.

Together with Zanón, the Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro (winner in 2018) announced the news, whom Padura, recently arrived in Barcelona, described as a colleague and friend.

Although the award ceremony will take place on Thursday, Padura took the opportunity to thank and remember two deceased personalities: the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, who died in 2003, and the bookseller Paco Camarasa, inspiration and first curator of the festival.

In addition to Claudia Piñeiro, the Pepe Carvalho Award has been won in the past by Don Winslow, Joyce Carol Oates, James Ellroy, Donna Leon and Andrea Camilleri, among others.