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Nobel Laureate’s Work Reviewed at Book City

Nobel Laureate’s Work Reviewed at Book City
Nobel Laureate’s Work Reviewed at Book City

The 21st Nobel Prize-winning book reading session which was dedicated to the works of the Spanish novelist Camilo Jose Cela (1916-2002) was held by the cultural center of Book City Institute in Tehran on January 17.

Concurrent with the 100th birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate, the session focused on reviewing and analyzing his first and most famous novel ‘The Family of Pascual Duarte’, published in 1942, IBNA reported.

Spanish Ambassador to Tehran Eduardo Lopez Busquets said that the book is the second major Spanish work of literature, after ‘Don Quixote’ by Miguel de Cervantes, which is a well-known novel in the world.

“Cela has no doubt had a great impact on promoting Spanish literature and that of the world,” Busquets said, adding that his literature “is very rich and deep and displays a sense of compassion over the helplessness of human beings.”

It is interesting to know that by the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Cela was among those who censored other writers, but about a decade later in 1950, his second work titled ‘The Hive’ was banned in Spain due to the harsh censorship in the system, and instead was released in Argentina.

Maryam Haq-Rousta, professor of Spanish and head of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Tehran, said that both the above-mentioned books of Cela have been made into movies.

  Exaggerated Style

“A total of his 14 novels, five poetry books and 17 travelogues have been published. He portrays the darkness and fear over Spain in the years after World War II in his works in an exaggerated way; this in fact is characteristic of his style to give exaggerated depictions of violence and corruption”.

‘The Family of Pascual Duarte’ has been reprinted almost 100 times in Spain. The Persian translation of the book by Farhad Ghabrai has had four reprints.

Ali Asghar Mohammad-Khani, cultural deputy of the Book City Institute, and Irma Navabi, professor of Spanish language and literature at the faculty, were also among the speakers at the session.

Nobel Prize-winning book reading sessions are held on the last Sunday of every month and each time a book by a laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature is reviewed.

 

Financialtribune.com