Argentine author Guillermo Saccomanno obtains the Alfaguara Award of Novel 2025

Madrid. Argentine writer Guillermo Saccomanno was recognized with the Alfaguara Award of Novel 2025 for his story The wind will burn, Chosen between 775 manuscripts, of which 110 were sent from Mexico. The jury chose the novel unanimously and will circulate in bookstores from March 20.

Pilar Reyes, editorial director of Alfaguara, said the award -winning text It is the story of a degradation, of an agonized dwarf that gradually leaves the miseries of the social body. Exposed to the influence of the Esterházy, the strange Argentine coastal village reveals the darkness that circulates through its underground areas, as if the visitors were a malignant touchstone that managed to bring to light the true nature of the characters. Written with a parco and rare intensity style, the novel is the careful construction of a deterioration that, although it takes place in a specific country, ends up being a distorted metaphor of the spirit of our time.

The jury was chaired by the Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez and was formed by writers Leila Guerriero and Manuel Jabois; The film director and screenwriter Paula Ortiz, and the writer and owner of the La Mistral Bookstore (Madrid), Andrea Stefanoni. The book narrates, as explained by the publisher, the story of The Esterházy, eccentric couple with a unclear past, who arrives at a town on the Argentine coast and begins to run an old hotel.

Y These two beings (and their two children, a girl and a child more disturbing and enigmatic than them) produce the effect of a sickly particle that is introduced into the cracks of a small society and sweeps with their daily dynamics, apparently calm. The couple turns out to be an amplifier of prejudices, hidden desires, superstitions, fears and larvated violence in many of the town’s inhabitants.

From Mexico, 110 manuscripts

Of the 725 manuscripts received, 322 were from Spain, 93 of Argentina, 110 of Mexico, 89 of Colombia, 38 of the United States, 27 of Chile, 25 of Peru and 21 of Uruguay.

Guillermo Saccomanno, born in Buenos Aires in 1948, published his first book of poems in 1979, Hunting game, although his main professional dedication in those years was advertising and writing scripts for Spanish, English, Italian and American editorials. From 1984 he ventured into the narrative, with his first novel, Prohibited spit blood, in addition to Danger situation (1986, Club of the XIII Award); Roberto and Eva (1989); Good pain (1999, National Prize for Letters); The trilogy about political violence formed by books THE LANGUAGE OF THE MALÓN (2003), Argentine love (2004) y 77 (2008, Dashiell Hammett Award), which had great success of criticism and public; The kid (2006); The office worker (2010, Brief Library Award); A teacher (2011, Rodolfo Walsh Award); Gesell Chamber (2012, Dashiell Hammett Award); Terrible accident of the soul (2014); Inverted love (2015) y Those who come from night (2018), both in collaboration with Fernanda García Lao, in addition to I am the plague (2020) y Blackbird (2024).

Since the delivery of the Alfaguara Prize, in 1998, after its interruption in 1973, among the writers who have received this prestigious recognition are Elisha Alberto, Sergio Ramírez, Elena Poniatowska, Manuel Vicent, Laura Restrepo, Guillermo Arriaga, Ray Loriga, Ray Loriga, Ray Loriga and Pilar Quintana.