The Tusquets award goes to a novel about the anti-capitalist terrorist cells of the 1970s.

The 1970s were a time of romanticized violence, with the emergence of various terrorist groups and anti-capitalist leaders such as the Baader-Meinhof group, Carlos the Jackal, and ETA itself in Spain. The Revolutionary Heart of the World , the novel with which Francisco (Fran) Serrano (Badajoz, 1982) won the 21st Tusquets Editores Novel Prize, worth 18,000 euros , was truly informed by all of them and none of them. It was announced this morning in Barcelona. The president of the jury, Antonio Orejudo, highlighted the author's "prodigious inventiveness" in addressing reality, calling the author—not well known beyond those who tend to read fantasy and science fiction—"a discovery." It will go on sale on October 8.

“The romanticization of violence is always problematic,” said the author, whose novels we knew from Desert Dogs, “but I’ve tried to show the contradictions that exist within a clandestine cell, why people end up resorting to violence… What I’m trying to do is find that silver bullet that will solve everything, even though there are other people who realize that the daily struggle is certainly less seductive and slow, but it can provide other satisfactions.”

"I considered how far I could go from the Pyrenees to the Franco regime and the terrorist movements that have existed, but that wasn't the idea."

Throughout the press conference, the question of whether there was any inspiration from ETA was raised, but the writer denied it (and, in fact, never mentioned the band). “I thought about it a lot. When I write, I start from seminal ideas, and I had the protagonist be a girl, daughter of Spanish exiles in Biarritz, who becomes an orphan and is captured by a terrorist cell. I considered how far I could take the plot from the Pyrenees down and into Francoism and the terrorist movements that have existed, but that wasn't exactly the idea I had. I wanted to talk about these small groups in general and their ideas of internationalism, pan-Arabism, and socialism in the Middle East,” he commented. And when asked, specifically, about the current situation, he didn't hesitate to answer: “I am in favor of a free Palestine and I believe that what is happening is genocide, and I am against genocide.”

The novel specifically tells the story of Valeria Letelier, whom we meet as she is being trained by an anti-capitalist cell. There, she meets two members of the gang, and one of them strikes her as terribly seductive, offering her a plan to take real action. But little by little, she begins to wonder if this is truly what she needs to do to achieve her goals.

"It's a novel about the contradictions of wanting to save the world , but of course, once crime and misdeeds come into play, you no longer belong to the normal people you're fighting for. I saw that as very fertile ground for the characters to grow," Serrano insisted.

"Suggestive," "precision," mastery of "action, anxiety, and the succession of episodes," "it reads like a thriller." These were the words used by a jury that included, in addition to Orejudo, Bárbara Blasco, Eva Cosculluela, Corina Oproae (last year's winner), and Juan Cerezo, editor of Tusquets. They awarded this novel "by majority" (not unanimously).

“I liked his powerful inventiveness. We forget that writers need imagination, not dragons… And now we're at a time when everything is based on real events… that's why the emergence of writers like Fran fills me with pride and satisfaction. He speaks about the world and reality with imagination. Reality isn't just transcribing something; it's much more complex. Terrorism is a comic, surreal, absurd, and tragic phenomenon, and Fran approaches the terrorist cells of the 1970s in this way. It's not a political novel, but rather uses the tools of tragedy and comedy and does so with admirable mastery,” Orejudo explained, admiring and affectionately regarding the author and the novel. “The hard part about writing is inventing,” he emphasized.

"Terrorism is a comical, surreal, absurd, and tragic phenomenon, and Fran approaches the terrorist cells of the 1970s in this way."

Blasco was interested in "the recovery of that romanticization of the revolutionary because we are in a moment in which it is sorely needed," and "also how all of this connects with the personal." For Oproae, who won the award last year with The Lemon House (about communism in Romania), the most striking thing was her "effective and fantastic command of language" and the creation of the characters: "That journey of the female figure from a radicalized young woman to a liberated woman in a very distant environment... Valeria captivated me with that mix of realism and fantasy." Finally, Cosculluela noted that she was interested in "portraying the contradictions of someone when they are blinded by a leader who has the characteristics of many of the populists who are so in vogue today."

The Tusquets Prize was first awarded in 2006 (it was not awarded twice). The most recent winners have been Corina Oproae, Silvia Hidalgo (Nothing to Say), Cristina Araújo (Look at That Girl), Menuda (Leña menuda) (Marta Barrio), and Dicen los síntomas (Dice los síntomas) (Bárbara Blasco).

The 1970s were a time of romanticized violence, with the emergence of various terrorist groups and anti-capitalist leaders such as the Baader-Meinhof group, Carlos the Jackal, and ETA itself in Spain. The Revolutionary Heart of the World , the novel with which Francisco (Fran) Serrano (Badajoz, 1982) won the 21st Tusquets Editores Novel Prize, worth 18,000 euros , was truly informed by all of them and none of them. It was announced this morning in Barcelona. The president of the jury, Antonio Orejudo, highlighted the author's "prodigious inventiveness" in addressing reality, calling the author—not well known beyond those who tend to read fantasy and science fiction—"a discovery." It will go on sale on October 8.