The Mexican writer follows in the steps of In Cold Blood to narrate "without fiction" a case that pitted Mexico and France against each other.The Penguin Random House publishing group announced at a luncheon held in Madrid last Wednesday at noon that the writer Jorge Volpi (Mexico City, 1968) had been awarded the 2018 Alfaguara Prize to..

the best novel for his book 'Una novela criminal' (A Criminal Novel), which had been submitted with the same title but under the pseudonym G. Fuchs. The book is, according to its author, "a novel without fiction, of an ambiguous genre, halfway between literature and journalism, stark reality and the resources of literature, based on a very notorious case that happened between Mexico and France, the Cassez-Vallarta case, which began in 2005."

This case caused a commotion in both Mexican and French societies with the arrest of two persons, then a couple, accused of kidnapping. "There was a diplomatic confrontation between Mexico and France, between presidents Felipe Calderón and Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy's pressures led to the release of Florence Cassez [after eight years in prison] but nothing prevented that Israel Vallarta had to spend 11 years in prison without even having been sentenced," explains from Mexico the famous writer, who is the author of novels like ‘En busca de Klingsor’ (In search of Klingsor, Seix Barral).

Read more: El País - CULTURA