The writer Espido Freire has won the XXII Anaya Award for Children and Youth Literature con ‘The Diario de la Pest’ a historical novel for readers from 12 years, as the publisher has released this Thursday.
The jury has highlighted the quality of prose and the author’s ability to “to combine an intimate story without losing at any time the tone and the thrilling rhythm“In the narrative, the jury continues, Espido Freire handles the different literary resources with skill and plays with an archaic style that allows us to immerse himself fully at the time of this novel.
“If I am clear about something, it is that literature and history teach us not only how the life and thought of the past were, but also how we build our reality today: ‘The Diario de la Peste’ speaks both of the challenges of a girl in the 16th century and of which any kid faces now: Who is, the value in difficult situations, the difference between appearances and reality, the attitude towards injustice and learning who can trust, among other challenges, “said the writer.
The Anaya Children’s and Youth Literature Award, endowed with 12,000 euro, is summoned annually with the intention of stimulating the creation of works in Spanish aimed at readers between eight and fourteen.
‘The Diario de la Pest’ He tells the story of Elena Hurtado López de Ayala, a young woman who flees with her brother Don Diego to save her life. The daily life of Elena is disrupted when her father, Don Juan, and her mother, Mrs. Magdalena, are sent to Puebla de Montalbán to investigate the outbreaks of the pandemic and some businesses that keep there.
Elena and her brother Don Diego – the only surviving heir and with a cognitive condition – must keep their servants, who plan to kill them, after feeling and suffering all the tension that the plague and circumstances of the confinement have made them suffer.
Elena finds out the servant’s plan and flees with her brother. To do this, he must cross a secret passage that his father entrusted him, haggle, lying and learning to survive with the few belongings that he gathered in a hurry before escaping. He could not even take a candil, but his diary, in which he will relate that trip worthy of legend.