The journalist and writer Cristian Alarcón today received the Alfaguara Award, with an endowment of $175,000for his novel “The third paradise”. The jury was chaired by Fernando Aramburu and also comprised of Olga Merino, Ray Loriga, the director of the Guadalajara Book Fair, Marisol Schultz Manaut, the person in charge of Cultural Affairs of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, Paula Vázquez, and Pilar Reyes, Editorial Director of Alfaguara.
The jury highlighted the narrative vigor of the work, set in Chile and Argentina, with a narrator who cultivates a garden while traveling through his family’s exile.
For this XXV edition of the Prize, 899 manuscripts were received, of which 408 were sent from Spain, 131 from Argentina, 119 from Mexico, 87 from Colombia, 57 from the United States, 43 from Chile, 29 from Peru and 25 from Uruguay.
Cristian Alarcón was born in Chile in 1970 but has lived in Argentina since his childhood. He is an outstanding journalist, author of exceptional chronicles and creator of the Amphibious Magazine and the “Red Harvest” site.
He is the author of the books “When I die I want you to play cumbia for me” (2003) and “If you love me, love me transa” (2010). He was visiting professor at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Austin, Texas, and at the University of Lille, France. He has received the Samuel Chavkin Prize, the Konex-Diploma of Merit Award in the Chronicles and Testimonies category (2014) and the Profile Award for freedom of expression (2019). He is a full professor at the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication at the University of La Plata and directs the Master’s Degree in Narrative Journalism at the School of Humanities at the National University of San Martín.
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