Last night, June 27, the 25th Premi Llibreter awards ceremony was held at the Sala Paral·lel 62 in Barcelona. The event featured a speech by the writers Muriel Villanueva and Raül Garrigasait and was hosted by the journalist Anna Guitart. In addition to presenting the 2024 Llibreter Awards, the professional career of the bookseller Júlia Secall, from the Roca bookstore in Valls, was also recognized for her 35 years in the business.
The aim of the award, organised by the Gremi de Llibreters de Catalunya, is to vindicate the bookseller’s profession and promote quality literature. With their votes, the bookstores of Catalonia want to highlight and recognise the significance of certain titles, while also highlighting their role as prescribers in the world of literature.
In this twenty-fifth edition, the award added a new category: Essay, Thought and Other Literature, which is added to the categories of Catalan Literature, Other Literature, Children’s and Young Adult Literature in Catalan, Children’s and Young Adult Literature of Other Literature and Illustrated Album.
The Llbreter Prize of Catalan Literature ended up in Xacona (Males Herbes, 2023), from Jordi Maso. «Xacona is a literary tour-de-force, a narrative experiment and a work of unusual ambition in the Catalan panorama. It is an intelligent and entertaining novel, in which Jordi Masó displays a mastery of the language and a virtuosity that make a minimal narrative plot become a true literary festival. From A to Z, Xacona It is an innovative literary work. Exceptional.
On the other hand, the Premi Llibreter of Other Literatures it was for Construction materials (Periscopi Editions, 2023) , by Eider Rodriguez, translated by Pau Joan Hernàndez, originally published in Spanish by Random House. «With a rigorous and elaborate structure, the novel becomes a literary exercise of extreme beauty and, with tenderness and sensitivity, puts distance to write a love letter to the father, imperfect and alcoholic, but, at the end of the day, his ».
In the category of Children’s and Young People’s Literature in Catalanthe Llibreter Prize went to I diumenge, meteorit (Animallibres, 2023), by Albert Pijuan. «A fast-paced and very funny story in which the author, with very fresh dialogues and a very particular use of language, tells us how the protagonist wants to declare his love to Adhara before the world ends. He will be accompanied by a very intelligent little sister and a group of friends willing to follow him to the end of the world.»
The Llibreter Prize of Children’s and Youth Literature in Other Literatures it was for Magical guide to self-defense with biscuits (Untamed, 2023), by T. Kingfisher (pseudonym of the American writer Ursula Vernon), translated by Elena Ordeig from and illustrated by Adrià Marquès. «We fall in love with the protagonist of this book. Mona is a witch with limited powers, but who, with ingenuity and the help of good friends, manages to do great things. It is a story with the structure of a medieval epic fantasy, very fun and with an excellent translation.
The Llibreter Award for Illustrated Album to Papallona (Ekaré, 2023), from the French Marc Majewskitranslated into Catalan by Matias Adam. The work has been published in Spanish under the title Butterfly by the same publishing house. “An exercise of great artistic and narrative quality at the service of emotion. Text and image merge to give meaning to a small great masterpiece that illustrates with great love the capacity that a father has through small gestures to open his son to life.”
Finally, in the new category of Essay, Thought and Other Narratives it was for Bla-bla-bla. The myth of ecological capitalism (Green Ray, 2023), by Miguel Pajares, translated from Spanish by Lidia Bayona. «Book about ecology and the blah-blah-blah that Greta Thunberg said were governments and corporations for their policies in the face of the climate emergency. “Was he exaggerating or are these really empty gestures that only serve to neutralize the citizen struggle?”
