The writer, playwright and poet Gonçalo M. Tavares, Trainer of Letters Prize 2026

The writer, playwright and poet Gonçalo M. Tavares has been awarded the Formentor Prize for Literature 2026as announced this Tuesday by the jury of these awards, whose call was revived in 2011.

Born in Luanda (Angola) in 1970, he spent his childhood in the north of Portugal. Writer, playwright and poet, he is considered by critics to be one of the most original, ambitious and dazzling voices in contemporary European narrative.

As the jury report reveals, Tavares has been recognized “for revealing the unexpected implications of a humanity afraid of itselffor telling the paradoxical epic of contemporary loss, for the audacity with which it has constructed a narrative alien to the temptations of obviousness.

“Diluting the strict boundaries that separate traditional literary genres, Tavares has sustained over the last 25 years a literary work of powerful personality, dazzling originality and vigorous imagination. His fictional work embraces characters whose extravagance can be attributed to the most unusual, strange and unexpected dimensions of the human condition. One of the merits attributed to Tavares’ work has been to give form, presence and voice to what culture would prefer to omit.. In this way it has allowed the lucidity of a decisive liberating exorcism,” the jury minutes continue.

As they highlight, “Tavares’ narrative scenarios evoke the gloom that shadows the soul of human beings and at the same time the exhaustion of a history that seeks in its texts the possibility of redemption. The mystery of pain and the brilliance of desires collide in his fictions like the explosion of an arcana announced and never consummated.” Therefore, they praise that “Tavares offers his time the possibility of understanding the remote origin of the disturbances, conflicts and tragedies that devastate human beings.”

“The Portuguese writer belongs to the literary genealogy dedicated to telling the reverse of reality. With the creative energy of a language capable of expanding the latent meanings of the world, Tavares thus resumes the true narrative tradition and makes this heritage a tribute to his ancestors.“concludes the jury, who thus highlights that he has been awarded for “enriching the school of great literature with his work, for following the trace of the narrative disorder of existence and evoking the parabolic allegory of the universal enigma.”

WORK TRANSLATED INTO MORE THAN 50 LANGUAGES AND 70 COUNTRIES

Multidisciplinary training, Tavares He studied Physics, Sports and Art before dedicating himself to teaching. Currently, he is a professor of Theory of Science and Epistemology at the University of Lisbon, an academic facet that permeates his work through a surgical precision in language and a constant exploration of the limits of logic and reason.

Since his debut in 2001 with Livro da dança, he has built a vast and powerful body of work that has been translated into more than 50 languages ​​and published in nearly 70 countries. He is the third most translated Portuguese author, after Fernando Pessoa and Eça de Queiroz.with 226 publications around the world.

Among his extensive production, projects such as the cycle of novels known as ‘The Kingdom’ -which includes titles such as ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Learning to pray in the age of technology’-, the series of short fictions ‘The neighborhood’ and the monumental epic ‘Un trip to India’. His most recent book published is a satirical and dystopian work titled ‘The End of the United States of America’ (Relogio D’Agua, Lisbon, 2025).

This recognition is added to other awards such as the José Saramago Award (Portugal, 2005); Camilo Castelo Branco Award (Portugal, 2006); Trieste International Prize (Italy, 2008); Belgrade Poetry Prize (Serbia, 2009); Award for Best Foreign Book (France, 2010), for ‘Learning to pray in the age of technology’; Oceanos Prize (Brazil, 2007 and 2011); European Literary Award (2011); Great Prize for Romance and Novel (APE, 2011); Vergílio Ferreira Literary Prize (Portugal, 2017); Margarita Michelena Fine Arts Award (Mexico, 2019); University of Lisbon Award (Portugal, 2019); or the Prix Laure-Bataillon (France, 2021).

FORMENTOR AWARD

The Formentor Award, among other winners, has recognized Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Jorge Semprún and Witold Gombrowicz, among others. After its recovery in 2011, fifty years after its first edition, the award was received by Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Javier Marías, Enrique Vila-Matas, Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Calasso, Alberto Manguel, Mircea Cartarescu, Cees Nooteboom, César Aira, Liudmila Ulítskaya, Pascal Quignard and Hélène Cixous, in the last edition, among others.

Before receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature also awarded Annie Ernaux (Formentor in 2019 and Nobel in 2022 and László Krasznahorkai (Formentor in 2024 and Nobel in 2025).