The announcement of the winner of the award and the presentation of this honorable mention was officially made on Monday, World Portuguese Language Day, at Palácio Galveias, in Lisbon, as part of the Lisbon Literary Festival - 5L.
The jury's reasoning in awarding the winners of this edition was highlighted by the deputy secretary general of UCCLA, Paula Leal da Silva.
"By far the best candidate. Faceted prose, literary awareness, narrative mastery, fictionality and irony regarding what literature – Portuguese and critical literature – can do. Prose like this has been missing for a long time," he said about the book by the prize winner.
Despite having carried out several works in the cultural area, this is the first time that Claúdio da Silva has “transformed it into a closed literary object”, he said, describing the book as “a kind of police investigation, in search of a ghost author. ‘Bull’ because it is a mythical animal”.
Cláudio da Silva, born in Huambo in 1974, is a director, playwright and theater actor, with a degree in Portuguese and Applied Foreign Languages and a bachelor's degree in Theater. He had already received other awards such as the SP/RTP for Best Cinema Actor, for his performance in "Filme do Desassossego" by João Botelho (2011) and the SIC/Caras Golden Globe for best theater actor, for his performance in "Se Isto é Um Homem", by Rogério de Carvalho (2021).
Carla Pereira, a writer born in Braga (Portugal), was awarded an honorable mention by the jury with her first book “After God Died”, revealed the Union of Portuguese-Speaking Capital Cities (UCCLA).
The work “After God Died” is described as a “powerful, intimate and meditative narrative, with few characters, whose lines of action sometimes seem to happen in a real reality, sometimes in another parallel, metaphysical reality” and also “a happy case of well-assembled and brief construction of an acute narrative, neither short story nor novel”.
The awards announcement event featured speeches by the municipal director of culture at Lisbon City Council, Laurentina Pereira, the head of the Lisbon Library Network Division, Edite Guimarães, the deputy secretary general of UCCLA, Paula Leal da Silva, and the UCCLA culture coordinator, Rui Lourido.
For Paula Leal da Silva, this award marks the “celebration of the Portuguese language within the scope of the 5 L Festival” and which has been gaining space and worldwide recognition.
“Portuguese is a global and cultural language” and this award represents “the most important in terms of literary revelation, in the Portuguese language, having a broad and truly representative international dimension” she added, quoted in a statement.
The note highlights the attraction of this award, saying that this year it received works in Portuguese from Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique), America (Brazil), Asia (East Timor), Europe (Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland) and Oceania (Australia)", says the statement.
This edition brought together 249 applications, and Brazil remains the country with the largest number of applications, followed by Portugal and Mozambique.
The award jury was composed of writers from each of the Portuguese-speaking countries and the territory of Macau, in addition to Rui Laurido from UCCLA and João Pinto de Sousa, representative of the 800 Years of the Portuguese Language Movement.
