Novel about the decline of a Barcelona bourgeois family wins the Josep Pla Award

Barcelona (ACN).- Catalan journalist Cristian Segura is the winner of the 43rd Josep Pla Award, a literary prize granted by the publishing company Destino for the best prose of the year written in the Catalan language. The novel 'El cau del conill' (The Rabbit`s Burrow) explores the decline of a bourgeois family from Barcelona through the points of view of it's patriarch Mr Amadeu Conill. Author Cristian Segura says the novel is a story of 'the survival' of a businessman that 'due to globalisation suffers a professional, family and human crisis'.

The novel is written with 'a lot of irony', Segura says upon receiving the award. He feels that the book captures the current situation of business families in Barcelona 'as a caricature, but accurate to reality'. Segura describes the lifestyle in the nice neighbourhoods of the Catalan capital. 'El cau del conill' is the first novel of this young writer and was chosen among 35 other publications from authors from all over the territories where the Catalan language is spoken. Jury members were Sebastià Alzadora, Rosa Cabré, Antoni Pladevall, Ester Pujol and Àlex Susanna.

For the Castilian language category, the winner is Alicia Giménez Bartlett. Her novel 'Donde nadie the encuentre' (Where nobody can find you) scoops the Nadal Award, also granted by the publishing company Destino. In the nineties, Giménez Bartlett was well-know for her thrillers. In fact, her character, inspector Petra Delicado was so successful that it became a TV series. Her new novel explains the curious story of Teresa Pla Massagué, an hermaphrodite who fought in the republican resistance after the Spanish Civil War.

Up to 284 Spanish prose fought for the Nadal Award but there was only one winner. The jury made up of Germán Gullón, Lorenzo Silva, Andrés Trapiello, Àngela Vallvey and Emili Rosales.