The judging panel granted the award to this novel by the Argentine writer that “recalls the country’s roots”.

The setting is 19th-century Patagonia. A young girl, the daughter of a white father and a Mapuche mother, plays on the riverbank with her family until the day a company of soldiers descends upon this territory. El país del diablo, novel which was unanimously chosen as winner of the 23rd Annual Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize, begins with the warning, “It’s a crucial day and the desert is witness”. “This is an amazing award. I am proud and honored to receive it. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about the fact that I’ve won, especially because of the seriousness of the judging panel and what the Guadalajara International Book Fair means to me. I am truly moved,” said Suez about the distinction she will accept on December 2 at the FIL Guadalajara.

El país del diablo is a “Patagonian western” set during the conquest of the ‘desert’, whose main characters are a Mapuche girl and five white men. “That is what General Roca’s—Argentina’s president of near the end of the 19th century—official government called the land in Patagonia where the Araucanian peoples, known as the Mapuche, lived. General Roca said that the devil’s country had to be erased, that they had to be exterminated. I myself am the granddaughter of Europeans, and General Roca gave my ancestors a place to settle. It is the place where my grandparents established themselves, where my parents were able to study. However, I was able to criticize those who killed in order to give my ancestors a home. Argentina would have been a much more amazing country with the multiplicity of cultures. This was a horrible time in history where masses of humans were searching for a place to live. I had to tell the story of this pain.”

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