Colombian author Jorge Franco has been awarded with the 2014 Alfaguara Novel Prize for his work “El mundo de afuera” (The Outside World). The jury, presided by Laura Restrepo, has selected the winner by majority vote.
Miami, FL - The Colombian author Jorge Franco has been awarded with the 2014 Alfaguara Novel Prize, consisting of $175,000 and a statue by Martín Chirino for his work El mundo de afuera (The Outside World), submitted under the title Aquel monstruo indomable and the penname Antonio Benjamín. The jury, presided by Laura Restrepo and composed of Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Ana Cañellas, Nelleke Geel, and Pilar Reyes (non-voting member) has selected the winner by majority vote.
A total of 872 manuscripts were submitted to the contest, the highest number ever in the history of the competition. Of these submissions, 381 were received in Spain; 120 in Argentina; 109 in Mexico; 54 in Colombia; 37 in the United States; 36 in Venezuela; 35 in Chile; 23 in Costa Rica, Panamá, and Nicaragua; 21 in Peru; 12 in Guatemala and Honduras; 10 in Bolivia; 10 in Ecuador; 9 in Uruguay; 6 in the Dominican Republic; 5 in Paraguay; 3 in Puerto Rico; and 1 in El Salvador.
Jorge Franco was born in Medellín, Colombia. His book of short stories Maldito amor won the Pedro Gómez Valderrama National Narrative Contest, and with his novel Mala noche he won the first prize in the 14th City of Pereira National Novel Competition and was a finalist for the Colcultura National Novel Prize. His novel Rosario Tijeras won the Ministry of Culture’s National Novel Prize, was awarded with the 2000 Hammett International Novel Prize (Gijón, Spain), has been translated into more than 15 languages, and has been successfully brought to both film and television. The film adaptation of his novel Paraíso Travel (2012) became one of the biggest box office successes of Colombian cinema. His most recent novel is Santa suerte (2010).
The Outside World takes place in Medellín. There, time is wrapped in a mist, and voices seem like whistles that get lost among tree branches. A castle-like structure stands watch in the overgrown outskirts of the city, and a blond girl runs out the door. Eyes watch, captivated by this unusual presence, and the girl disappears into the forest.
It is 1971, and this girl’s father, don Diego, has been kidnapped. El Mono is the leader of the crime ring, whose intention is to demand a million-dollar ransom from the family. El Mono has reasons aside from economics to kidnap don Diego: a romantic obsession with the man’s daughter, Isolda, a blonde princess whose father, a devotee of Wagner’s operas, has kept her locked in the “castle” to preserve her purity and avoid sullying her with the crude outside world that surrounds them. Don Diego, a Germanophile, is married to Dita, a German woman who left Nazi Berlin to live in the replica of La Rouchefoucauld castle that her husband has built in Medellin. Since she was little, Isolda has escaped into the woods, where she played with imaginary rabbits, while El Mono would watch her, hidden in the trees.
Short and uncomplicated, this novel about love and death is both poetic and vivid, with a masterful use of tension, incorporation of cinematographic techniques such as flashback and parallel narration, and the echoes of both folkloric tales and news blotters.
“If this article awakens an interest in the topic of hitmen for you, I recommend Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco Ramos.”
—Mario Vargas Llosa
“The prose of Jorge Franco gives off a lyric sensibility.”
—The Independent, UK
