We all know about the National Book Award or should if we are readers in the US of A, but how many of us are aware of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize or Premio de Literatura en Lengua Castellana Miguel de Cervantes.  So who are some of the winners of this most prestigious literature lifetime award for Spanish speaking authors?

JMRL has a number of them represented in its collections, and the names of some are not obscure.  There is Jorge Luis Borges, the wonderfully lyrical poet from Argentina, who won in 1978, or Octavio Paz of Mexico who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  One of my favorite Latino writers is Mario Vargas Llosa.  I laughed throughout his book “La Tia Julia y el Escribidor” or “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.”  He also won the Nobel after he was awarded the Cervantes Prize.

Explore these writers in English or give them a try in Spanish.  If we don’t have the Spanish version, you can probably find it at the University of Virginia or request it though JMRL’s interlibrary loan system.

Other Cervantes Prize winners at JMRL are:

Juan Carlos Onetti of Uruguay

Rafael Alberti of Spain

Ernesto Sabato of Spain

Carlos Fuentes of Mexico

Álvaro Mutis of Columbia

José Jiménez Lozano of Spain

~ The Reluctant Blogger