Argentina's Leticia Martín wins the I Lumen Novel Prize with 'Vladimir', "an upside-down 'Lolita'"

It is "like Lolita, but in reverse", an idea that the members of the jury have repeated: in this case, a mature woman lives a great passion for a young man. And, in addition, it takes place in a scenario of collapse: a blackout. It is a novel: it is titled Vladimir (precisely, in honor of Nabokov, author of Lolita). Its author is Leticia Martín, born in Buenos Aires in 1975. He has won by majority the I Lumen Prize for Novel.

This Thursday the ruling was announced, in the Madrid library Eugenio Trías, inside the Retiro Park, in the middle of the Book Fair. The jury was composed of the writers Clara Obligado, Ángeles González-Sinde (former Minister of Culture) and Luna Miguel, the bookseller Lola Larumbe and the literary director of Lumen, María Fasce, who defined the novel as "very disturbing and deeply unsettling".

"The attraction and seduction of a mature man towards a young woman has been represented many times in literature, but the desire of a mature woman towards a young man, no. Vladimir bets on a reading of Lolita in a feminine key, in the context of a world that is extinguished. With great narrative tension and steely style, Leticia Martín has written a polemical novel about the limits of desire and power relations," reads the jury's statement. The prize, aimed at women writers (407 works from Spain, Latin America and the United States were presented), is endowed with 30,000 euros and the publication of the book in Lumen, which will be in September.

"It's a provocative novel," says González-Sinde, "it talks about the depletion of resources, both physical and moral, and contains an interesting reversal of roles." It is also interesting the use of collapse not as an argument, but as a scenario, a phenomenon that is also seen in other recent novels, such as the latest by Isaac Rosa, Lucía Litjmaer or Agustín Fernández Mallo, which speaks of the climate of normalization of the everyday apocalypse. "I needed to speed up the times and I achieved that in a context of catastrophe," explained the winner, who was speaking from Buenos Aires by videoconference. "In their situation there is no light, there are no screens, there is no outside."

"This book shows that talking about sex and desire is not talking about love, that talking about the end of the world is not talking about heroism and that you can write a hard and dangerous novel while also being tender. Basic instincts are not just a matter of last survival," said Luna Miguel, who said he had "eaten" the book at once and reread it a couple of times. It is also a short novel. As for eroticism, Martín cites the influence of Marguerite Duras. "I have a lot of respect for eroticism, I find it very difficult to write, something that I always feel fails: Duras is the master in this," explains the winner, who cites Silvina Ocampo as another of her teachers.

The abuse of power is another theme of the book. "It's an eternal issue: that someone with power, whether economic, political or labor, abuses that power in front of others. It is an issue that must continue to be discussed. What should not be erased is that it should be erased," adds the author. They are common themes in his work, and he points out that, as they say, writers are always writing the same book. "I have been working for a long time on the border between civilization and barbarism, the human and the animal, it is a line that I do not want to close," adds the winner.

Martín has a degree in Information Sciences and a postgraduate degree in Cultural Management and Communication Policies. She is the author of the essay Feminismos (2017) and the novels El gusto (2012), Estrógenos (2016), Topadoras oxidadas (2019) and Un ruido nuevo (2020), as well as a long series of poems. Estrógenos met Spanish edition, in 2019, by the hand of the Huso publishing house.

The Lumen Women's Prize was convened between 1994 and 1999, to discover literary talent among writers, and its jury included Ana María Matute, Ana María Moix or Cristina Peri Rossi, among others. Among the winners were Ángeles de Irisarri, with Ermessenda, Countess of Barcelona, in 1994; Ana Rodríguez Fischer, with Objetos extraviados, in 1995; Clara Obligado, for Marx's Daughter, in 1996; Alicia Giménez Bartlett for Una habitación ajena, in 1997; and Clara Usón, for La noche de San Juan, in 1998. The current Lumen prize could be seen as a continuation of that award, and Vladimir, by Leticia Martín, as a continuation of that award.