Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, ​​1943) has won the Cervantes Prize, the most important award in Spanish literature. The writer thus culminates an impeccable career full of success and other awards and recognitions, such as the Planet in 2010 or the Kafka in 2015.

Works as emblematic as The verdict on the Savolta case (from 1975 and considered the first novel of the Transition), The city of prodigies or the humorous series about his famous nameless detective -among others- mark out an enviable career. Today your signature can already be written in gold letters in Spanish literature.

Mendoza said in an interview that, if he believed in it, wish he could be reincarnated as Charles Dickens. Obviously it is unnecessary to compare or compare him with the great English writer of the XNUMXth century. But yes parallels can be found in the traditional tones that distill the works of both.

Mendoza's books have as much sense of humor as they are an x-ray of the social panorama around in many times and eras. The arguments and that panorama are intermingled to give shape to that landscape and countryside. Thus, for example, frescoes come out of Barcelona in the first half of the XNUMXth century, with the problems of its social classes or its disturbances.

His style has managed to combine a balance between the intellectual and the popular, or the most sensible but also funniest and surreal analysis of those times and their protagonists. In this way, and over time, You have won the most important: the favor of an audience as extensive as it is heterogeneous, which will undoubtedly be in luck today for the award of prizes for his most followed writer.

To make matters worse, a personality is added in ways, more than educated, exquisite, and with very clear ideas about what literature is or can be and mean: you must entertain, amuse and take care of those readers. So is his prose too. And their stories. They are in the right place and dignify that popular touch, which is sometimes so depreciated by higher-flying criticism.

His historical novelssuch as The amazing journey of Pomponio Flaco, full of humor, or those of black gender and at the same time crazy like the series of that priceless psychiatric detective and without a name, They are the perfect example of that balance achieved.

But Mendoza has written both novels and essays (New York), reports (Three lives of a saint), children's literature (The way to school) or , (Restaurants). Has been screenwriter and was nominated in 2005 together with its director, Jaime Chávarri, for the adaptation of his work The year of the flood. And the list of awards prior to this Cervantes is lost to us in the mists of time.

Why read it

Por that special balance between the most cultured and the most popular literature, both of prose as rich as it is careful. For so many nuances in his narration and for that style of humor that has conquered so many loyal, demanding and less demanding readers.