Gustavo Faverón Patriau Novel 'Vivir Abajo' Wins Top Award in Germany

"The past year was very strange," observes Faverón Patriau, who is professor of Romance languages and literatures at Bowdoin. "Several of my novels were finalists for literary awards-the Finestres Prize in Spain, the Vargas Llosa Biennial also in Spain, the Hot List of the Frankfurt Book Fair Award-and I did not win any of those. I was not expecting to win the biggest of all, the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for books translated into German last year, but that is the one I got, together with my German translator, Manfred Gmeiner.

"My novel-Vivir Abajo in Spanish, Unten Leben in German, To Live Below in English-partially deals with the consequences of mid-twentieth century Nazism in Latin America, so my expectations of how it would be received by the German-speaking critical establishment and the general readership were great and loaded with fear! But it's been an extremely positive reaction."

The Book Fair's Grand Jury writes: "Manfred Gmeiner has rendered this labyrinthine narrative with playful elegance, never losing sight of its idiosyncratic characters, its literary allusions, or the magical sparkle of its poetry. His translation-as fearless as it is gripping-makes reading this book an unforgettable experience."

The jury describes the novel as a "deliberately and cleverly constructed game of deception [taking us] into life 'down below'-into house cellars, underground prisons, and catacombs… Faverón Patriau weaves a dense web of references where truth and fiction constantly shift."