David Lozano wins the Gran Angular AwardSM EDITORIAL
The Zaragoza native David Lozano (until a few months ago manager of Zaragoza Cultural) has won the Gran Angular Award for the best book of youth literature with his work ‘Intruso’, an award endowed with 35,000 euros, the largest in the Spanish-speaking world in this category. Pedro Caldas, for his part, has won the SM El Barco de Vapor 2024 Award for ‘The Legend of the Samurai’.
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The jury has awarded the recognition to David Lozano (who already won this award in 2006 for ‘Where the Shadows Emerge’) for “the originality of the approach, the literary quality and the narrative agility. For presenting a complex and transformative scenario, with a protagonist voice that connects with the potential reader, building a fictional world that challenges adolescents individually., without condescension. Reading it does not leave you indifferent; It stirs and drags you to position yourself and share points of view. It provokes reflection and debate. It creates a fictional world from which you do not emerge unscathed.”
In the novel, Dani confesses that he is fascinated by ‘stalk’ (snoop) social profiles of deceased people. He is interested in death when it is abrupt, unexpected and unjust, like that of the teenager Joel, whose murderer and classmate until then, Ivánhas just been transferred to the juvenile center where he himself is detained.
“It is a novel of second chancesa plea against all types of harassment, and the desire for justice and reparation is present on each of the pages.” The book, which has 207 pages in paperback, is recommended for readers ages 14 and up.
The cover of ‘Intruso’, by David Lozano.
unexpected friendships
Maica Rivera, cultural journalist, presented the event and wanted to highlight “the determined commitment of both stories to unexpected friendships in life, to brotherhood and the extraordinary human capacity for maturity in moments of great adversity.” Also “the introspective force of both stories, whose conflicts invite a constructive debate, optimistic but not at all Manichaean.”about the possibilities of forgiveness, of change for the sake of a better society and the development of a clear dialogue in the face of death that moves without condescension.
For Berta Márquez, manager of Children’s and Young People’s Literature at SM, “This year’s winning books are a perfect example of what literary awards mean today, where writers who were hidden are sometimes discovered and whose voice is very worth taking into account, others serve to recognize and consolidate authors with an important career, and are always a great vehicle to reach many readers.”
