Raquel Taranilla wins the Biblioteca Breve award with a novel mocking the excess of information

According to the judges, ‘Noche y océano’ (Night and Ocean), the first novel by the winner, is “packed with a smart sense of humor”.

Raquel Taranilla (Barcelona 1981) was the winner of the 62nd edition of the Biblioteca Breve award with her novel, Noche y océano, the first fiction novel written by this Complutense University of Madrid professor who has been living in the capital city since 2016. The jury–Lola Larumbe, Fernando León de Aranoa, Clara Usón, Pere Gimferrer, and Elena Ramírez–emphasized “the playfulness and parody” in this story “packed with a smart sense of humor and lots of expressivity, written with great confidence and composure, which is completely unexpected from an author's first novel”.

The novel tells the story of Beatriz Silva, a sociology professor who finds a deeply upsetting story in the newspaper: someone stole the embalmed skull of F.W. Murnau, a silent film director. She is confident she knows the thief: it could have only been Quirós, a filmmaker living in the same big and dilapidated house as her; someone who is obsessed with filming a movie about the legendary director. Bea doesn't dare to talk about her love for this new neighbor of hers.

Read more: EL PAÍS 

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