Luisgé Martín wins the Herralde with a novel about the inevitable desire and infidelity

The writer Luisgé Martín, in an image from last year CARLOS ROSILLO

Perhaps it is impossible to avoid insane desire and promiscuity, scientifically impossible to maintain fidelity ... Reflections of this depth are those raised by Irene, a scientist who works on the sexual behavior of rats to elaborate some theories that she will end up experimenting with herself. Throughout

, the work with which the Madrid-born Luisgé Martin has won, out of the 886 presented, the 38th Herralde novel prize (18,000 euros), which failed this Monday in Barcelona.

"It is a plea in favor of promiscuity", the author has defined his work that has given him his first great award after three decades of recognized trajectory among critics.

The adulterous adventure with Adam, an American millionaire, life with Martín, whom she marries without knowing anything about her, or the relationship since childhood with Hugo, with whom she entered into first indelible experiences, make up the context and the

of Irene's intimate trip, who moves from Madrid to Chicago to continue her studies ... and her field work.

In reality, loyalty, infidelity or the unspeakable desires that appear in

are themes that are not unrelated to Martín's production, not so much in his early days, when with rather precious prose he addressed the legitimacy of revenge in his debut. ,

(1995), or on the destruction of beauty in

(2000, Ramon Gómez de la Serna award), as from

(2005), where the same themes of the love relationships, eroticism or mistrust.

"It is a novel about infidelity, desire, promiscuity and the form that lies take when expressing that desire not always sentimental," the writer has clarified in person in Barcelona about a novel that is the first of his with a woman's voice : “It helped me avoid the clichés of male or homosexual promiscuity”.

And in this iconoclastic line, he assures that "these issues are closer to us than we think, from the king (and there Juan Carlos I, with Corina, is already a novel of infidelity in itself) to the last subject." , from his words, that there is little to do in the face of these instincts. "Resisting infidelity or adultery seems to me like those who resist leaving a book unfinished, a very serious mistake: you cannot waste time on what not worth it".

"Perverse moralist", as defined, because he is interested in "that look from the sidelines", happy to have obtained an award that he had already attended --and lost, of course-- before (”I also presented myself to the Planet: I left a hair between the pages of the manuscript to see if they would open it and when they returned it to me, it was still there "), assures that by writing the novel he has learned that" zoology is a field that anticipates what happens in human beings: we are perfectly animals in this field".

Also that "the perversion is in the culture: a higher cultural level, greater sexual sophistication."

Even so, there is no

moral message

in

, although there are some tacit debates: “Non-promiscuous people, who have not traveled or have not read, have lived half.

As John Steinbeck said, we do not look in the face of what is there and the deceptions with the couple that they are.

Only a handful of handsome men can be pure faithful because they can resist and reject;

the rest, no ".

Martín (1962), author of Anagrama - where he has published the novels

(2012), and

(2015), as well as the essay

(2020) - also played in

with autofiction.

And in

there is also a nod to it, with a series of

adultery

that the author asked five friendly Spanish writers to write to him, in a literary promiscuity in this case.

Thus, Edurne Portela, Manuel Vilas, Lara Moreno, Sergio del Molino and José Ovejero are also anonymous authors of the novel based on alleged reports from private detectives, who investigate those who have said in a survey that you had been faithful.

A certain umbilical cord with some of the background themes of the winning novel maintains the plot of the finalist work,

, where the Argentine Federico Falco (Córdoba, 1977) exiles a writer who decides to return to the field after being abandoned by his boyfriend.

The mourning of the rupture and the loneliness allow the protagonist to reel off memories of his life and try to explain the genesis of the rupture, in a poetic tone that draws from the author himself, selected by

magazine

in 2010 as one of the best young storytellers in Spanish.

"My obsession was how to count the passage of time, the ellipsis, and describe a landscape, the Argentine pampa, a horizontal line, little else", has declared virtually from Buenos Aires who, although he has made a certain career especially with the books of stories (such as

or

...) and has some a short novel (

), he has also cultivated poetry, as in

(2008). Another challenge that Falco set for himself, which readers will be able to appreciate from November 25, when the title appears in bookstores. They will find "a novel against impatience", according to Anagrama's editor, Silvia Sesé.