The Galician writer Manel Loureiro won the XXIX Fernando Lara Novel Award last May for his work When the storm passes. The award has been granted annually by the Planeta publishing house since 1996 and since then works by authors as different from each other as Terenci Moix, Francisco Umbral, Javier Reverte, Ian Gibson and Máximo Huerta have won. The prize is worth 120,000 euros and in this edition there was a record participation with more than 550 works submitted to the competition. The jury, made up of Ana María Ruiz-Tagle, Clara Sánchez, Nativel Preciado, Pere Gimferrer and Emili Rosales, finally decided to award Loureiro’s novel. In the last edition the award was won The rebellion of the good guys by Roberto Santiago.
Manel Loureiro (Pontevedra, 1975), apart from being a writer, is a lawyer, screenwriter, columnist and presenter. His career in literature begins in a blog on the Internet where he wrote in his spare time. From here came his debut in the novel, Apocalypse Z. The beginning of the end, a horror book that was released in 2007 and was a great bestseller. Later they would arrive Apocalypse Z. The dark days and Apocalypse Z. The wrath of the righteous, thus completing a trilogy. The film adaptation of the first part, directed by Carles Torrens and starring Francisco Ortiz and José María Yazpik, will soon premiere on Amazon Prime Video.
‘When the storm passes’ by Manel Loureiro [Editorial Planeta]
After this trilogy that portrays a post-apocalyptic future, Loureiro has continued publishing horror novels (The last passenger, glare), Science fiction (Twenty) or suspense (The door, The bone thief). With When the storm passes, Loureiro enters again into the thriller and the mystery to approach a story that, according to the author himself, has been confirmed by a character who is related to himself, a man who abandons his job to spend his time on other occupations.
The novel is set in Ons, a small island off the Galician Atlantic coast. There, Roberto Lobeira has no chance of reaching dry land or communicating with the outside world due to a storm that seems to be the prelude to a tragedy. When he discovers a bundle that the waves have carried to the shore, its contents cause the few inhabitants who live on the island to unleash decades of resentment, jealousy, old scores to settle, and a thirst for revenge. But this is not all, since a mysterious and lurking presence leaves a bloody offering at the door of his house, as if it were an enigmatic message that he cannot understand. Immersed in a whirlwind of hatred, unspeakable secrets and excessive ambition, Lobeira will have to survive on the island… until the storm passes. The plot, the author and the prize predict that cWhen the storm passes It will be one of the most read crime novels of summer 2024.
