Jordi Sierra i Fabra wins the Edebé Prize for the third time

This year, the €55,000 will be shared by veteran winner Sierra i Fabra (Barcelona, 1947), winner in the children category with L’aprenent de bruixot i Els Invisibles (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Invisibles), and Murcia-born Luis Leante (Caravaca de la Cruz, 1963), whose book Fuig sense mirar enrere (Run and Don’t Look Back) won in the young adult category. The texts, which will be published in March, were chosen amongst 325 manuscripts in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Euskera.

The winning book's protagonist is an orphan boy who is the assistant of an alchemist.

“The Edebé is a prize pursued by hundreds, but always won by Jordi Sierra i Fabra.” In this way, paraphrasing the words of soccer player Gary Lineker, was announced yesterday one of the two winners of the Edebé Prize, one of the best endowed awards for children and young adult literature. This year, the €55,000 will be shared by veteran winner Sierra i Fabra (Barcelona, 1947), winner in the children category with L’aprenent de bruixot i Els Invisibles (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Invisibles), and Murcia-born Luis Leante (Caravaca de la Cruz, 1963), whose book Fuig sense mirar enrere (Run and Don’t Look Back) won in the young adult category. The texts, which will be published in March, were chosen amongst 325 manuscripts in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Euskera.

L’aprenent de bruixot i Els Invisibles has as its protagonist an orphan boy, who is the assistant of an alchemist. When he inadvertently pours three drops of a potion that he should have carried intact, the philter brings back to life the body of a murdered child. “I wrote it in six days, but I needed sixty years of experience for it,” says Sierra i Fabra, who at 68 has published 400 titles. The Barcelona-born writer had already won the Edebé in 1994 and 2006. Leante’s book also approaches the subject of death, but he claims that the book “is not grim, macabre, or morbid.” The novel is written in the second person: a teenager talks to his late father while he finds himself embroiled in a chase that includes all the ingredients of noir fiction.

 

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