The winner of XVI the Alfaguara Novel Prize to be announced on March 20

• Record number of participants: a total of 802 works from Spain and Latin America
  
  
• Manuel Rivas chairs the jury for the sixteenth edition of the Alfaguara Prize 

• The Alfaguara Prize this year celebrates its sixteenth edition, having established itself as a benchmark for quality literary awards and as the most international prize in Spanish
  
  
• The Prize is endowed with $175,000 (130,000 euros), a commemorative sculpture by Martin Chirino and simultaneous publication in 19 Spanish-speaking countries
  
  
• Winners to date include: Eliseo Alberto, Sergio Ramírez, Manuel Vicent, Clara Sánchez, Elena Poniatowska, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Xavier Velasco, Laura Restrepo, Graciela Montes, Ema Wolf, Santiago Roncagliolo, Luis Leante, Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, Andrés Neuman, Hernán Rivera Letelier, Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Leopoldo Brizuela
  
  

On Wednesday March 20, the winner of the XVI Alfaguara Novel Prize will be announced. A total of 802 manuscripts were submitted for this year’s award, the highest level of participation in the history of the Prize. Of the 802 manuscripts, 342 are from Spain, 133 from Mexico, 99 from Argentina, 61 from Colombia, 34 from the United States, 28 from Chile, 23 from Venezuela, 19 from Ecuador, 18 from Peru , 9 from Guatemala and Honduras, 8 from Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Bolivia, 7 from El Salvador, 7 from Uruguay, 4 from Paraguay, and 2 from Puerto Rico.

The jury’s prestige is well deserved and has been made up of prominent writers and leading cultural figures over the years. This year, the writer Manuel Rivas will chair the jury for the XVI edition of Alfaguara Novel Prize. The composition of the rest of the jury will not be made public until the moment the winner is announced.

Manuel Rivas was born in A Coruña and he began his career in the press and media at a young age. His articles are collected in the anthologies El periodismo es un cuento (1997), Mujer en el baño (2003) and A cuerpo abierto (2008). He has also published the poetry anthologies El pueblo de la noche (1997) and La desaparición de la nieve (2009). As a novelist he has won  a number of prizes, including the Spanish Critics Award for Un millón de vacas (1990), the Critics Award for a Galician Language Work for En salvaje compañía (1994), the National Narrative Prize for ¿Qué me quieres, amor?  (1996), the Spanish Critics Award for El lápiz del carpintero (1998) and the the Critics Award for a Galician Language Work for Los libros arden mal  (2006), considered one of the greatest works of literature in Galician, and voted Book the Year by the booksellers of Madrid. Todo es silencio (2010) was shortlisted for the Hammett Prize -- the literary award for crime fiction -- and has been made into a film by José Luis Cuerda. In 2011, Alfaguara published his short story anthology under the title Lo más extraño. His latest novel is Las voces bajas  (2012).

Since its first edition in 1998, the Alfaguara Prize jury 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, Manuel Vicent, Bernardo Atxaga and Rosa Montero.

The Alfaguara has established itself as a benchmark for quality literary awards given to an unpublished work written in Spanish. The award is endowed with $175,000 (130,000 euros) and a commemorative sculpture by Martin Chirino. Its prestige throughout the Spanish-speaking world means that winning works enjoy international distribution, supported by the simultaneous publishing of the winners in Spain, Latin America and the U.S.

Winners to date include: 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, El arte de la resurrección by Hernán Rivera Letelier, El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling) by Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Una misma noche by Leopoldo Brizuela.

The winning novel is distributed simultaneously in 19 Spanish-speaking countries, reaching more than 400 million Spanish speakers. Successive Alfaguara award-winning books have been translated into many languages, earning outstanding reviews in the international arena, as well as international awards, thus corroborating the high literary quality of the winning entries. The winning novel in 2009, El viajero del siglo by Andrés Neuman, went on, in 2010, to win Spain’s Literary Critics Award. Its English translation, published in the UK by Pushkin Press, was chosen as one of the best novels of 2012 by the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Independent. Meanwhile in 2011, Abril rojo by Santiago Roncagliolo (Alfaguara Prize 2006), won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, one of the UK's most prestigious awards, and given to the best translated work of fiction in the UK. El ruido de las cosas al caer by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (Alfaguara Prize 2011), was shortlisted for the prestigious Medicis and Femina awards.

A widely translated prize

The success of the Alfaguara Prize over the past 15 years has spread far beyond the borders of the Spanish-speaking world, as evidenced by the fact that all the winning works have been translated into other languages.  El ruido de las cosas al caer by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, has been sold to the publishers Bloomsbury in the UK, Riverhead in the US, Seuil in France and Ponte alle Grazie in Italy. These latter two publishers have also bought the rights to last year’s winner, Una misma noche by Leopoldo Brizuela.   El arte de la resurrección by Hernan Rivera Letelier has been bought by more than ten international publishers including Mondadori in Italy and Signatuur in the Netherlands.  El viajero del siglo, by Andres Neuman, has been published by the prestigious Farrar, Straus & Giroux house in the U.S. One of the works to have enjoyed the greatest international success has been Mira si yo te querré by Louis Leante (Alfaguara Prize 2007). In total, the rights have been sold so far in 21 countries, including UK, Germany, Brazil, China, Korea, France, Italy, Russia and Turkey.

The verdict will be broadcast live via the websites: www.alfaguara.com/es,www.elpais.com,www.cadenaser.com andwww.prisa.com