Juan José Millás, Elvira Lindo and Irene Vallejo, awarded by the booksellers of Madrid

Juan José Millás, Sofia Moro

The Association of Libraries of Madrid has recognized this Thursday the career of the writer and journalist Juan José Millás with the Legend Award.

“This year the incalculable value of what is close, tangible, everyday has been revealed.

We wanted to recognize the figure of the friend, the one who always accompanies us and is by our side.

Juan José Millás is, without a doubt, one of them ”, the minutes of the jury state.

The organization, which awards its awards every year, has awarded the distinction of Best Fiction Book to Elvira Lindo for

(Seix Barral) and the one for Essay to Irene Vallejo for

(Siruela).

Awards will be awarded throughout the week beginning Monday, December 14.

Apart from the long literary and journalistic career of Juan José Millás, the jury wanted to value his permanent defense of reading, conceived as collective medicine because, in the words of the author, “when a book is read, its therapeutic effects are spread to the rest of the community".

The booksellers have especially pointed out the reflections that Millás shared on the usefulness of literary works in one of his columns: “They serve above all to go from one part of yourself to another, to go up and down the stairs of your own existence, of your life".

The booksellers of Madrid have recognized Lindo's "ability to tell a family story and create a generational portrait of the last century, through the sincere gaze of a woman who understands, accepts and admires with love already absent parents."

They have defined that the work

is told “from the nakedness of feelings that, with a close and warm language, achieves a difficult balance between reproach and affection to remind us that we are, most of the time, what has us touched to live ”.

He was a finalist for this award,

(Sixth Floor)

by Juan Gómez Bárcena.

"It is a portentous novel for what it counts and how it tells it," they have indicated.

In the essay category, the jury unanimously opted for

(Siruela)

the great success of Irene Vallejo, for which she received the National Essay Award on November 4: “There are books that one would like to be able to recommend and read to everyone, this is one of them.

Vallejo has managed to narrate sublime moments, almost unknown stories, adventures, passions, desires, knowledge, ignorance, fire, water, salt, commerce, bandits, scammers, love affairs, hatred ..., in short, life as we understand it, they understood it, they will understand it, because that is what the human experience of living is about: knowing that taking care of our past serves to understand our present and predict our future ”, explains the ruling.

The finalist was

(Tusquets), by Géraldine Schwarz translated by Núria Viver Barri.

“In a masterful way, in this essay / report, the author addresses the mechanisms that Germans, Italians, Austrians and French activated to put themselves in profile and dilute into normality the terrible events of which they were protagonists, by action or omission, in the years before the Second World War, in the war itself and in peacetime ”.

Madre Medusa (

Ekaré)

by Kitty Crowther, has been selected as Best Illustrated Album.

This work highlights her way of talking about “motherhood, the fears derived from it, the resignations gladly assumed by women when it comes to being mothers and how important it is to know how to recognize their children as independent human beings. , with their own tastes and desires ”.

On Juanjo Guarnido and Alain Ayroles, in the category of Best Comic, they have highlighted "their magical and particular narrative."

Sixth Floor) by the Portuguese by Ana Luísa Amaral and translated by Paula Abramo, has been selected as the Best Poetry Book.

The jury has highlighted the author's reception as a "warm and familiar border and neighbor house that exists between our two countries."