“Yesterday I discovered Antonio Gamoneda and when I read him it was as if he was writing about me and Palestine”said on Tuesday the Palestinian writer Adanía Shibli, who received the XXII Leteo Prize in León the same day.
An award for which she said she was “grateful” at a time when the Palestinians, “in addition to the destruction and suffering, are becoming people without words and without solitude”, while writing “allows others to have a place in our lives”. It is for this reason that he celebrated the fact that the Leteo Club highlights “an individual experience but also the loneliness that exists in Palestine” with an award that he considers “an expression of shaking hands and saying that we are not alone.”
The director of the IV International Palabra Festival, in which the award of this distinction is framed, Rafael Saravia, referred to Shibli as “a great writer and also a great thinker capable of looking at the world differently”which makes it worthy of an international recognition that began 22 editions ago with Antonio Gamoneda and is awarded to “writers who dynamite, change or arouse new lines of thought and literary creation.” Saravia also wanted to clarify the position of the Leteo Club on the situation in Palestine, which “This is not a conflict between two peoples, but rather a very clear genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government”“Our position is one of respect for Jewish culture and people, but the conflict is not between two parties, but between a government,” he said.
For this same reason, the choice of Shibli for the Leteo Prize was highlighted. for “the way he remains silent to give time to speech, which in moments of so much destruction cannot be executed directly”collected Ical. In the same sense, said the councilor for action and cultural promotion of the City Council of León, Elena Aguado, who described the winner as “a great writer and a very remarkable thinker”who, as an essayist, has “incisive and penetrating works and articles that invite reflection, discussion and controversy.”
Aguado recalled that Shibli’s ‘A Minor Detail’ Wins European Book of the Year Awardwhich was supposed to be delivered to her in October 2023 in Frankfurt, but “was cancelled due to the Hamas attack, for the simple fact of being Palestinian and that her literature was born in Palestine”, despite the fact that “It is a great novel for its language, for its style, for its form and for its structure”. “He deserved the award which was cancelled due to intolerable political interference because The republic of letters, that of freedom of languages, styles and ideas, cannot be called into question by any circumstance. and without this free space of creation, literature or art are not possible,” said the mayor, who wanted to recognize her “as the great writer that she is,” as well as “show her solidarity as a symbol of all those who have suffered so much and “they continue to do so in the Gaza Strip.”
