The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, honours the overall literary work, in any of the Spanish languages, of a Spanish author whose work is considered to be an integral part of current Spanish literature as a whole.
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Luis Landero has been awarded the Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas, corresponding to the year 2022, at the proposal of the assembled jury.
The jury singled out the author “for being an extraordinary storyteller, creator of numerous fictions with characters and atmospheres of great expressiveness and excellent writing, recovering the Cervantes tradition with a mastery of humour and irony and brilliantly incorporating the role of the imagination”.
In addition, the jury pointed out that “Luis Landero belongs to the first generation of Spanish democracy and has played a fundamental role in the renewal of our literature. His first novel, published in 1989, was a literary and, in a certain sense, historical landmark. He has maintained, with the same eagerness, the pulse and originality that already appeared in his literary beginnings and which has led him to maintain among his readers an enormous capacity for astonishment”.
The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, is worth 40,000 euros.
Biography
Luis Landero was born in Alburquerque, Cáceres, in 1948. In 1960, he moved to Madrid with his family. He began working at the age of fourteen in various trades, as an apprentice in a mechanic’s workshop, an errand boy in a grocer’s shop and an administrative assistant in a dairy. After the death of his father in 1964, he devoted himself professionally to flamenco guitar, accompanying various singers for some years. He studied Hispanic Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid and worked there as an assistant lecturer in French Philology. He taught Spanish Language and Literature at the Calderón de la Barca Secondary School in Madrid, at the School of Dramatic Art in the same city and at Yale University.
His first novel, ‘Juegos de la edad tardía’, published in 1989, won the National Fiction Prize and the Critics’ Prize.
He has published 16 books, including 11 novels, which have had a decisive impact on Spanish literature in recent decades, occupying a prominent and highly personal place in the so-called “new Spanish narrative” born in the 1980s and 1990s.
His works include, along with ‘Juegos de la edad tardía’, the following: ‘Caballeros de fortuna’ (1994, Tusquets), ‘El mágico aprendiz’ (1999, Tusquets), ‘El guitarrista’ (2002, Tusquets), ‘Retrato de un hombre inmaduro’ (2009, Tusquets), ‘Absolución’ (2012, Tusquets), ‘La vida negociable’ (2017, Tusquets), ‘Lluvia fina’ (2019, Tusquets), ‘El huerto de Emerson’ (2021, Tusquets) and ‘Una historia ridícula’ (2022, Tusquets).