«El comensal» is among the most important literary awards in the world

She is only 34 years old and three years ago she caught the attention of critics and readers with her first novel. In "El comensal", Gabriela Ybarra (Bilbao, 1983) narrates moving through the delicate frontier between reality and fiction, the murder of her grandfather Javier de Ybarra, whom she never met, and the death of her mother, whom she accompanied during an aggressive cancer treatment that finally got the best of her. «El comensal» has already achieved the Euskadi de Literatura in 2016 and has now entered the «longlist», a list of thirteen titles from which the winner of the Man Booker International, one of the most important awards in the world, will be awarded to the best work translated into English and published in the United Kingdom during the previous year.

This award is a derivation of the Man Booker, reserved for original texts in English and that have won already classic titles such as "Children of midnight", "What is left of the day", "The god of small things" and "Disgrace" . Two years ago, the organization decided to award an equivalent prize for the best translated work. The importance of the award gives an idea of ??the company Ybarra keeps. Along with her novel, works that form part of the long list, are, among others, "El impostor" by Javier Cercas, "Como la sombra que va" by Antonio Muñoz Molina, "Vernon Subutex 1" by Virginie Despentes, "The white book" of Han Kang (winner in 2016 of the first edition) and «Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, which won the International Arabic Narrative Award in 2014. The short list, with half a dozen titles, will be made public on 12 April and the winning work will be announced on May 22.

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