Argentinean Ariel Magnus wins the IV Novel Prize Ciudad de Estepona with ‘Mentir la verdad’ (Lying the truth)

The winning work in the contest organized by the Estepona City Council and the Manuel Alcántara Foundation will be published by Pre-Textos. The prize has an endowment of 25,000 euros.

The work ‘Lying the truth’, the Argentine writer Ariel Magnus, has won the IV Novel Prize City of Estepona, according to the jury’s decision of this award, convened by the City of Estepona and the Manuel Alcantara Foundation and endowed with 25,000 euros. This has been announced Thursday at a ceremony attended by the mayor of the municipality, José María García Urbano, the president of the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, Antonio Pedraza, the writer and journalist Guillermo Busutil, director of activities of the Foundation, and the writer Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, chairman of the jury.

The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, stressed the importance of this cultural initiative, “which strengthens the link between the city and the arts and is a valuable stimulus and recognition for creators”. The alderman has mentioned the commitment that the City Council has been making to promote cultural proposals, “with the aim of promoting a more humane city and a better quality of life”. To this end, important literary prizes have been created, a program of activities has been designed throughout the year and the city has been provided with new public cultural facilities, such as the Library of Contemporary Cultures, which occupies eight floors of the Mirador del Carmen Cultural Center.

García Urbano has reiterated his gratitude to the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, the renowned jury and those responsible for this project “for their collaboration and dedication to place the Novel Prize ‘City of Estepona’ at the forefront of the most prominent literary competitions in the country”.

Antonio Pedraza has highlighted the special bond of Manuel Alcántara with Estepona, and spoke of the transformation of the city in recent years. He also recalled that the initiative of the Novel Prize came from the mayor himself and has turned Estepona into a cultural reference open to poetry, novels and art.

For his part, Guillermo Busutil stressed the high participation of this edition of the City of Estepona Novel Prize and thanked “the intense work of the jury”. In addition, he has highlighted that Ariel Magnus is a “very published” writer, finalist of the Biblioteca Breve Prize in 2020, with novels with forceful themes. “This will be his leap into the Spanish and European market. He works a literature between reality and fiction, with metaliterature, fluid prose and historical rigor.”

The jury, made up of renowned members of the Spanish literary and journalistic community, met on September 5 to deliberate on the finalist novels, after evaluating the nearly 800 works submitted. Chaired by Ignacio Martínez de Pisón and made up of novelists Laura Ferrero and David Uclés; Rafael Arias, head of the Letras Corsarias bookstore; Silvia Pratdesaba, editor of Pre-Textos; and Guillermo Busutil, head of activities at the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, decided by majority vote to award the prize to ‘Mentir la verdad’.

In their decision they highlighted “the literary quality of an autobiographical fiction on the background of the history of the Nazis established in Argentina, in a literary game with Borgesian and picaresque novel resonances, which connects directly with the current reality through the theme of fake news and information intoxication”.

Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, president of the jury, pointed out the high level of the finalist novels in this edition, noting that they were all of sufficient quality to be published. In reference to the winner, he said that Ariel Magnus mixes real facts with fiction, “he tells everything with such verisimilitude that the reader doubts what is real and what is invented”. “It has documentary rigor and entertaining prose, something that is appreciated as a reader,” concluded the writer.

Successful participation

Since its creation, the City of Estepona Novel Prize has attracted the attention of writers from all over the world. In its first edition (2021), it gathered more than 300 originals from countries such as Germany, France, Egypt, Canada, USA, Guatemala and Mexico, resulting in the winning novel ‘Tumbas de agua’, by Mexican author Miguel Tapia. In its second edition, participation doubled, exceeding 600 originals, and the winning work was ‘Buitrera’, by Manuel Moya. In 2023, the novel ‘El sabor de mi madre’, by Marina Perezagua, won the award among nearly 700 entries from different parts of Spain, Europe and Latin America.

This year, the City of Estepona Novel Prize has received a total of 771 works from Spain, Europe and Latin America, consolidating its international projection and its role as a platform for the promotion of new voices of contemporary narrative.