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Associate Professor of English Pablo Maurette has been awarded the Herralde Novel Prize. (Courtesy Photo)\t\t<\/p>\n\t\tAssociate Professor of English Pablo Maurette has been awarded the Herralde Novel Prize. (Courtesy Photo)\t\t<\/p>\n
A Florida State University faculty member has been awarded the Herralde Novel Prize, a prominent literary honor in the Spanish language, for his novel exploring the concepts of ownership and plagiarism inmemory and literature.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor of English Pablo Maurette<\/a> earned the honor for his recent novel, \u201cEl contrabando ejemplar,\u201d which translates to \u201cExemplary Smuggling.\u201d The Herralde Novel Prize is given to an author\u202ffor an unpublished manuscript, which is common for several Spanish-language prizes. Maurette is only the fifth Argentinian writer to have won the award and is the first FSU faculty member to receive it.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile this prize isn\u2019t very well known in English writing, it might be the most prestigious literary award for young authors writing in Spanish,\u201d Maurette said. \u201cFor that reason, and since my novel competed against almost 900 other novels, I feel extremely fortunate and proud to have earned it. I also feel very humbled because some of my favorite writers in Spanish have won this prize.\u201d<\/p>\n The prize was established in 1983 by Jorge Herralde, the founder and publisher of Anagrama, a publishing house in Barcelona, Spain. Each year, Anagrama publishes the award-winning novel and provides the author a monetary reward of\u202f25,000 euros.<\/p>\n \u201cEl contrabando ejemplar\u201d is Maurette\u2019s seventh publication, joining a roster of four books of essays and two other novels. His first novel, \u201cIl tempo \u00e8 un fiume\u201d or \u201cTime is a River,\u201d was a contender for the Premio\u202fGregor\u202fvon Rezzori, an Italian prize for foreign fiction.<\/p>\n \u201cWriting is what I do, and it\u2019s what I\u2019ve done since I can remember,\u201d Maurette said. \u201cPrizes are important in a writer\u2019s career as they tend to give you, at least for some time, a lot more visibility. Even if I didn\u2019t receive any awards or recognition, however, I would continue to write as long as I live quite simply because it\u2019s how I express myself. I feel lucky that I understood this a long time ago, and I\u2019ve put all my energy and effort into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Maurette\u2019s novel tells the story of two aspiring writers who are close friends despite having a significant age gap. The older writer is working on a novel about Buenos Aires in the 1600s, which shaped its economy at the time with a sophisticated and clandestine trade system known as \u201cexemplary smuggling.\u201d When this writer passes, the younger writer steals the manuscript, determined to plagiarize it.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything we write, even if we think it\u2019s original, comes from something we\u2019ve read and forgotten about,\u201d he said. \u201cLiterature is a type of paramnesia, that phenomenon by which you attribute to yourself memories that happened to others. In relation to the millennia that human beings have spent on this earth telling one another stories, we need to convince ourselves that we create out of nothing, that we are original, that we own what we write. That\u2019s very naive.\u201d<\/p>\n In its synopsis of the award-winning novel, Anagrama writes, \u201c\u2019Exemplary Smuggling\u2019\u202fis a novel that questions the meaning of what is lost and what is invented. A celebration of the personal and the collective, it transforms the act of storytelling into a unique and moving literary experience. A novel that finds its place within the great tradition of the best Latin American narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n The Herralde Novel Prize has been awarded in the past to a long list of distinguished writers, including Roberto Bola\u00f1o, Javier Marias,\u202f\u00c1lvaro Enrigue and Guadalupe Nettel.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department of English is absolutely thrilled that Pablo has been given this wonderful award for his new novel \u2014 he\u2019s in very elite company,\u201d said Andrew Epstein, department chair and Caldwell Professor of English. \u201cThe Herralde Novel Prize further solidifies Pablo\u2019s international reputation as both a celebrated novelist and a scholar of literature.\u202fWe couldn\u2019t be happier about this amazing and well-deserved recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n Maurette, a native of Buenos Aires, earned his doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2013. He joined the FSU Department of English<\/a> in 2019 and teaches in the department\u2019s Literature, Media, and Culture program. In May 2023, he worked as a writer in residence for Italy\u2019s Fondazione Santa Maddalena, and from April to June 2024, he was a research fellow at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in California.<\/p>\n