Javier Cercas is the second Spanish author to receive the Taofen Prize, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in China. In this year’s edition, the finalists for the foreign fiction category were the German Judith Hermann, the Russian Xenia Pushka, the Japanese Shinya Tanaka, the French Adrien Bosc and the Dutch Tommy Wieringa.
“When it comes to the hardest, most personal and collective aspects of our past, what we prefer, as individuals and countries, is lies”, said the Spanish writer Javier Cercas (Ibahernando, Spain, 1962) upon receiving an award for best foreign novel published in China in 2015 in Peking. The winning book was El impostor (The Impostor), his first to be translated into Mandarin.
The prize includes publication of the work by China People’s Literature, one of the largest publishing houses in China. The first print run of 5000 copies will go on sale immediately and the publisher is already publishing a second work: Soldados de Salamina.