The Uruguayan writer Fernanda Trias He pointed out that his work Heir to a literature that works with strangeness and the unusuala way of seeing the world very much Latin Americanespecially from the region around the Río de la Plata, in the south of the continent.
“It has to do in particular with the literature of the unusual and strange, I think several of us are working on that, but also.” It is a tradition that is very close to our hearts, I mean, it’s really a very Latin American tradition and also very much from the River Plate,” he said.
He mentioned that in Uruguay there are authors known for promoting this tradition, such as: Felisberto Hernández, Armonía Somers, Marosa di Giorgio and Mario Levrero.
“There is a genealogy of great sophistication in the outlook, of that look at things that makes everything seem a little strange, and without a doubt, I like it, I feel comfortable in this tradition” he explained.
The Uruguayan living in Colombia received from the Mexican Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) with the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for his book the mountain of the furies“A novel rooted in the Latin American narrative tradition and reconfiguring it through an extraordinary female perspective full of insights and nuances,” said the jury.
That’s that The author receives the prize for the second timededicated to women’s literature.
The first was in 2021 for his novel pink dirthe accepted a recognition that changed the projection of his work.
“Winning the Sor Juana gave my work a lot of visibility. The wonderful thing about prizes is that they create space for new readers: they come to win the prize, and if you’re lucky, they stay. pink dirt “It was read much later, and I really believe it was a direct result of the recognition,” he said.
Despite the expectations that this success had created, Trías assured this the process of the mountain of the furies was not characterized by pressure. When he won first prize, he had already been working on this new novel for two years, starting in 2020 during the pandemic, which allowed him complete freedom to create.
“I was lucky because I didn’t start this book from scratch after the award; I had already come a long wayand that protected him from any outside gaze or fears that so much visibility could have created,” he explained.
One of the most striking elements of the mountain of the furies the thing is The mountain takes on the role of narrator. The novel alternates between chapters narrated by a woman and chapters narrated by the mountain itself.
This gesture that makes you think risky and unusualresponds to the search for the horizontality between the human and the non-human.
“The mountain is a storyteller. I wanted to horizontalize the relationship and give them equal status. Constructing this voice was difficult: it had to be credible and not infantile, with an almost mythical, superhuman tone that sees the world from another time and flies beyond the human. Finding that language was a lot of work,” he said.
The author recognized that this approach Dialogues, albeit indirectly, with indigenous Latin American worldviews where nature is viewed as a living being.
For Trías, this idea of territory as character is no coincidence, since it is “impossible” to write contemporary literature with its back to nature in the context of environmental crisis and climate collapse.
The author claimed that There is a growing interest in exploring the relationship to the land, particularly among Latin American writers from non-traditional perspectives.
Although these are still rare narratives, he assured that they will become more widespread Discourses on environmental crisis, displacement and climate vulnerability are becoming more and more urgent.
“Practically, this is going to become more and more common because I think that is the case with the whole climate crisis, the environmental crisis and the destruction of the environment right now.” Writing a novel that has nothing to do with nature seems strange to me because we have already recognized that it is crucial,” he concluded.
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