Juan Gabriel Vásquez wins the Alfaguara Literary Prize 2011

The Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been awarded the Alfaguara Literary Prize 2011, endowed with $175,000 (about 133.306 €) in prize money and a commemorative sculpture by Martín Chirino, for his novel El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling), which was presented to the competition under the pseudonym Raúl K. Fen.

The jury, chaired by Bernardo Atxaga and which included Gustavo Guerrero, Lola Larumbe, Candela Peña, Imma Turbau and Juan González, declared the winner by unanimous decision.

A total of 608 unpublished manuscripts, written in Spanish, had been submitted for the 14th Annual Alfaguara Literary Prize. Of these, 231 came from Spain, followed by Argentina (105), Mexico (99), Colombia (46), the USA (29), Peru (25), Chile (19) and Venezuela (14), among others.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez was born in Bogota in 1973. He is the author of the collection of short stories Los amantes de Todos los Santos (The Lovers of All Saints) (Alfaguara 2001) and two novels. Los informantes (The informers) was chosen in Colombia as one of the most important novels of the past twenty years and was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the UK. Historia secreta de Costaguana (The Secret History of Costaguana) won the Qwerty award for best novel in Spanish (Barcelona) and the Fundación Libros & Letras Award (Bogota) and is currently on the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, to be decided on 26 May in London. He has lived in Paris and in the Belgian Ardennes, and in 1999 he settled permanently in Barcelona. He has translated works by John Hersey, Victor Hugo and E. M. Forster, among others, and his journalistic work is also renowned: Vasquez is a columnist for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, and he won the Simón Bolívar Prize for Journalism for El arte de la distorsión (The Art of Distortion), the essay in the book of the same title. He is also author of a brief biography of Joseph Conrad, The Man from Nowhere, Nostromo (2007). His books have been translated into fourteen languages.

El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling) opens with the exotic escape and subsequent pursuit of a hippopotamus, all that remains of Pablo Escobar's zoo which he used to flaunt his power. This unlikely event sets in motion the memory Antonio Yammara, the hero and narrator of The Sound of Things Falling, a bleak survey of a time of terror and violence in Bogota, depicted as a literary territory full of meanings.

Since its first edition in 1998, the Alfaguara Literary Prize has been presided over by Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Mendoza, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Jorge Semprún, Luis Mateo Díez, José Saramago, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Ángeles Mastretta, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sergio Ramírez, Luis Goytisolo and  Manuel Vicent.

The Alfaguara Literary Prize has become one of the most prestigious quality literary prizes awarded to an unpublished work written in Spanish. It is worth $ 175,000 in prize money and comes with a commemorative sculpture by Martín Chirino. Its world standing as one of the most significant Spanish literary awards means winners can look forward to international distribution, supported by the simultaneous publishing of the winning works in Spain and in the Americas. Winners to date have included: Caracol Beach by Eliseo Alberto and Margarita, está linda la mar by Sergio Ramírez (both winners in the prize's first year), Son de Mar by Manuel Vicent, Últimas noticias del paraíso by Clara Sánchez, La piel del cielo by Elena Poniatowska, El vuelo de la reina by Tomás Eloy Martínez, Diablo Guardián by Xavier Velasco, Delirio by Laura Restrepo, El turno del escriba by Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf, Abril rojo by Santiago Roncagliolo, Mira si yo te querré by Luis Leante, Chiquita by Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, El viajero del siglo by Andrés Neuman and El arte de la resurrección by Hernán Rivera Letelier. All enjoyed intercontinental distribution throughout almost all Spanish-speaking countries in the year they won.

As in previous years, the announcement of the winner was broadcast live via web pages: www.alfaguara.com/es, www.elpais.com, www.cadenaser.com and www.prisa.com.