Spanish novelist and poet Álvaro Pombo is to receive the 2024 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour.

Spanish Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun announced that 85-year-old Pombo had won the award worth €125,000 ($132,600) on Tuesday.

It is due to be presented on April 23, 2025, World Book Day. The minister wrote on the social media platform X that after a literary career spanning some five decades, Pombo had become one of the great contemporary writers in the Spanish language.

Pombo, who hails from the the northern Spanish region of Cantabria, was being honoured for his diverse and unique body of work, he continued. Some of his best-known novels include 'El héroe de las mansardas de Mansard,' which was published in English under the title 'The Hero of the Big House', and 'La fortuna de Matilda Turpin'.

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