Natalia Litvinovapoet and editor born in Belarus in 1986, but established in Buenos Aires Since she was ten years old, she has been awarded the Lumen Award of novel 2024 for his first novel, Firefly.
The jury, made up of the writers Ángeles González-Sinde, Luna Miguel and Clara Obligadonext to Lola Larumbebookstore director Rafael Alberti from Madrid and Maria Fasceliterary director of the Lumen label, has declared the winner for unanimity to this novel that was presented with the title of The girl with the arms of steel and under the pseudonym Darina.
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“A novel that reveals a dazzling and moving voice, with the difficult quality of simplicity. In the tradition of the best russian literaturegoes from realism to it mythical naturally and knows how to use humor and irony to tell a story that we had not yet read. War and emigration, life in Belarus (‘the country that is breaking’) as a backdrop against which the memories of a childhood marked by the disaster of Chernobyl and the rwomen’s persistence. A luminous novel and radioactive“, said the jury about Firefly.
And the author herself was born a few months after burst of the nuclear power station, in a time of chaos, fear, misery and poverty. Her family decided emigrate to Argentina to seek a better future, but things were not so simple. Precisely this novel serves to remember a good part of his lost childhoodthrough snippets of his memoryalthough there is also room for spaces of allegorical fantasy that are responsible for filling the voids where there is no memories.
Thus, the protagonist will begin a imaginary dialogue with his maternal grandmotherCatalina, whom he never met while returning to his mother’s home after a breaking off sentimental. In that moment of emotional instability, of rediscovery of one’s own identitythis story focuses on the uprooting that recovers the oral story of the women of an immigrant family within a world that is literally blown up.
The Lumen Award is endowed with 30,000 euros and, in this edition, 549 manuscripts have been received from Spain and Latin America.
Last year, the winner was Leticia Martin with the novel Vladimira reflector of the classic Lolita.
