Argentina’s Vicente Battista Wins the 2025 Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Award
Vicente Battista. Photo: X
July 12, 2025 Hour: 10:25 pm
The jury of the International Novel Prize Rómulo Gallegos 2025 award for El simulacro de los espejos, by the Argentine writer and journalist, Vicente Battista.
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“It is undoubtedly one of the great contemporary novels.” Said a jury, made up of renowned Latin American intellectuals with extensive experience, in the ruling.
Battista expressed his joy and motivation to continue living after receiving the award in Caracas. Visibly moved, he emphasized that this recognition of his Kafkaesque-inspired novel demonstrates to him that not all is lost, despite the difficult situation that Argentina is going through, affected by far-right policies that are destroying culture, science, and the rights of citizens.
The Argentinian made his position clear to the award jury and the ceremony participants: “The Casa de las Américas and the Rómulo Gallegos awards are the most transparent,” stated the person who has served as a jury member in both contests.
He emphasized that in those experiences, he was given the originals of all the works without imposing a single instruction or bias. In that sense, he recalled the Cuban writer and former president of the Casa de las Américas, Roberto Fernández Retamar, who once told them: “here, literary quality is rewarded, and only that,” and the same thing happened when he participated as a jury member in the Rómulo Gallegos Award.
The jury of the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize, made up of representatives from Argentina, Guatemala, Venezuela, Spain and Cuba, selected a work from 474 entries from 23 countries.
This award, which since 1964 honors the Venezuelan novelist Rómulo Gallegos, rewards narrative creation in Spanish with a critical approach and committed to social justice throughout the continent, and since 1990 is open to works written in Spanish globally.
Vicente Battista, an Argentine writer and journalist born in 1940, has been known for promoting works that reflect the social and cultural realities of Latin America, demonstrating its commitment to a literature that combines aesthetic quality with deep political and social content.
In addition to the award-winning novel, the author has written notable collections of short stories such as Los muertos (1967), which won the Casa de las Américas prize, and El final de la calle (1992), which received the First Municipal Prize of the City of Buenos Aires. He has also contributed to literary magazines such as El escarabajo de oro, Nuevos Aires, and to the cultural section of the Clarín newspaper.
Source: teleSURtv.net