TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Uruguayan poet, 95, wins top Spanish literary award
Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale, 95, on Thursday won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world.
Change Size
Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale is pictured during an interview with AFP at her home in Montevideo on Sept. 10, 2018. (AFP/Pablo Porciuncula Brune)
U
ruguayan poet Ida Vitale, 95, on Thursday won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, Spain's Culture Minister Jose Guirao announced.
Born in 1923, Vitale is the last surviving member of a Uruguayan art movement known as the "Generation of 45" and currently lives in the United States.
Spain established the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, named after the famous author of Don Quixote, in 1975. It is considered to be "the most prestigious and remunerative award given for Spanish-language literature" by the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Read also: Poetry legend Sapardi Djoko Damono honored at 2018 UWRF
The jury said Vitale was awarded the prize for her poetry, literary criticisms and translations, adding that her language was "one of the most remarkable and well-known in Spanish poetry, at the same time intellectual and accessible, universal and personal, transparent and profound."
She is the fifth woman to win the prize.
"I never expected to win the prize, it's absolutely bewildering," she told AFP. "It's a surprise... an excess of generosity from Spain.
