Who is the 2019 Planeta Prize Winner?

When we are learning a new language, any stimulus is good to practice it and discover different things that help us become true experts. On this occasion, we want to give you some ideas so that you can start reading in Spanish with a writer who, attention!, has just won the Planeta Prize, one of the most important awards in Spanish literature. Who is the 2019 Planeta Prize Winner?  This is the famous writer Javier Cercas.

Javier Cercas He is a writer who rose to fame thanks to his novel Soldiers of Salamis, translated into more than thirty languages. It is a perfect book for Spanish students because it has very clear and fresh language, so you will learn many new words but its reading will be very dynamic. The protagonist is a journalist who is going through a bad patch both personally and at work until one day he comes across the story of Rafael Sánchez Mazas, founder and ideologist of the Falange. During the civil war, Sánchez Mazas hides in the forest and on one occasion is discovered by a young soldier from the Republican side. This young man, instead of killing him or taking him as a prisoner, decides to spare his life. From that event begins the journalist's entire intriguing investigation: Why was he hidden? Why did the young man decide not to kill him? Who was this young soldier?

Therefore, this novel will allow us to improve our Spanish while discovering a very special and important part of Spain's history: the Civil War. Furthermore, one of the most interesting factors, which is precisely what made Cercas famous, is having approached the conflict from a very different perspective than usual. What are you waiting for to discover it?

Apart from Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas has written many works that allow us to discover decisive moments in our history such as, for example, The laws of the border, where we find the climate of the Spain of the Transition with a quinqui and his band as protagonists, Anatomy of a moment, which recounts the coup d'état of 1981 or broken glass, a work with which he has won the Planeta Prize and which tells us the story of a mosso d'Esquadra.

Don't wait any longer and go ahead and start your first book in Spanish with this very important Spanish writer. And if you want to discover more writers like this or improve your beloved Spanish, don't hesitate to come to Hispania, Spanish school, where our professional and enthusiastic team It is waiting for you to teach you everything you need.

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Article written by Rita Rodríguez Varela for Hispania, Spanish school.