07/19/2020 - 8:53
- Clarín.com
- Culture
The Spanish writer Juan Marsé , one of the great names in Spanish literature of recent decades, passed away in Barcelona on Saturday at the age of 87.
"We deeply regret the death of Juan Marsé (Barcelona, January 8, 1933 - July 18, 2020). Rest in peace, dear Juan," the literary agency Balcells said on Twitter.
Marsé is part of the so-called 'generation of the 50' together with his friends Jaime Gil de Biedma, Carlos Barral, Eduardo Mendoza, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán or Juan Goytisolo.
His books transfer post-war Barcelona , describe with a careful, realistic and ironic pen the post-war period and the social tensions between the traditional bourgeoisie, the new elites and the working class.
"I receive the sad news in Brussels that Juan Marsé, a key figure in Spanish literature, has left us. A man of firm convictions, who through his works managed to transport us to the social reality of Barcelona in the post-war period. My love for his family and friends, "wrote the President of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez.
In Brussels I receive the sad news that Juan Marsé, a key figure in Spanish literature, has left us. Man of firm convictions, who through his works managed to transport us to the social reality of Barcelona in the postwar period.
My love to your family and friends. pic.twitter.com/mixGyYYZuU
"Juan Marsé has died, and in Barcelona we feel as if a piece of our soul has been taken from us. Our commitment is to continue fighting so that the Barcelona of the neighborhoods that he so well portrayed and loved never dies," he wrote on the same network. Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona.
Marsé was an apprentice jeweler, worked in advertising and was editor-in-chief of a magazine.
Literary critics and writers describe him as the "last classic novelist" of Spain. Shy, somewhat elusive and modest, Marsé never described himself as an intellectual, only as a "narrator".
"My life lacks interest," he announced to Josep María Cuenca, author of his biography "While Happiness Comes , " when they began to meet.
In 2008 the writer was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Nobel Prize for Spanish Literature, which joined other prestigious awards such as the Planet, obtained in 1978 for "The Girl with the Golden Panties", the Brief Library (1966), for "Últimas tardes con Teresa", the Prize for Criticism of Castilian Narrative (1993) for "El enrujo de Shangai" or the Juan Rulfo, in 1997, the most prestigious Latin American prize.
"Juan Marsé does not really know how much talent he has, how important the work he has done, or how much his readers owe him," said Peruvian writer and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa at the time.
The Catalan author began writing stories in the insula and El cervo magazines, until in 1960 he published his first novel, "Locked up with a single toy".
Catalan writer in the Spanish language, Marsé said in several interviews that the writer's homeland "is the language and not the language" and defended "the cultural and linguistic duality of Catalonia" . Something "that worries so much and that enriches us all," he said when receiving the Cervantes award.
With information from AFP