Literature The writer Clara Sánchez, chosen to occupy the X chair of the RAE

The Plenary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has elected in its session this Thursday, March 23, the writer and philologist Clara Sánchez (Guadalajara, March 1, 1955) to occupy the X chair, vacant since the death of Francisco Brines on May 20, 2021

Literature The writer Clara Sánchez, chosen to occupy the X chair of the RAE

The Plenary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has elected in its session this Thursday, March 23, the writer and philologist Clara Sánchez (Guadalajara, March 1, 1955) to occupy the X chair, vacant since the death of Francisco Brines on May 20, 2021. His candidacy was presented by the academics Soledad Puértolas, Carme Riera and Paloma Díaz-Mas.

Clara Sánchez graduated in Hispanic Philology from the Complutense University with a thesis, directed by the professor of Spanish-American Literature at the Autonomous University, Teodosio Fernández, which dealt with the Mexican Narrative of the Wave: Gustavo Sainz, a study aimed at unraveling how the so-called Mexican "juvenilismo" was lashing narrative art and endowing it with an unknown freshness and irreverence. At the Complutense she entered the field of semantics under the baton of the academic Gregorio Salvador Caja. She was a university professor for seventeen years at UNED, but she has also participated as a commentator, columnist and collaborator in various Spanish and foreign media.

Since his first novel published in 1989, Piedras preciosas, critics highlighted the originality and modernity of his narrative, its contemporaneity, as fundamental contributions to the literature of the late 20th century. In the international arena, Nouvel Observateur stressed that she "owns a style and a freedom of tone that enchants. Her look is ironic. Cruelty is softened by melancholy and even indulgence to express our society."

After thirty-four years and hundreds of written pages, he has not given up in his efforts to investigate the ins and outs of the present, to capture what the times bring. She herself has confessed her obsession with extracting the extraordinary from the ordinary, the surprising from the most routine lives.

His vital feeling of strangeness and discomfort in the face of life, carried over from childhood, has been reflected in all his novels in characters who are forced to adapt to new and untimely situations: the strange look on the urbanization where the boy from Latest News lives of paradise; Julia's strangeness about her own existence in the dream that she lives in Presentimientos; Sandra's surprise at discovering that the scariest monsters are the ones hiding behind nice faces in What Hides Your Name, and the surprise of the narrator of A Million Lights on her first day at work. It could be said that on these and the rest of her novels the Kafkaesque winds have left a veil of uprooting that is difficult to avoid.

She is the author of the novels Piedras preciosas (1989, Debate, Alfaguara), The night is no different (1990, Debate), The stranded palace (1993, Debate, Alfaguara), From the viewpoint (1996, Alfaguara), The mystery of all the days (1999, Alfaguara), Latest news from paradise (2000, Alfaguara Award), A million lights (2004, Alfaguara), Presentimientos (2008, Alfaguara, Destination), What hides your name (2010, Nadal Award, Destination ), Come into my life (2012, Fate), Heaven has returned (2013, Planeta prize), When the light comes (2016, Fate), The silent lover (2019, Planet), Hell in paradise (2021, Planet ) and I peccati di Marisa Salas (2022, Garzanti, Italy; soon in Spain).

His work has been translated into several languages ​​and has an important international impact, especially in Italy. Among the awards received are the Alfaguara award (Latest news from paradise), the Nadal award (What hides your name) or the Planet award (Heaven has returned), among other national and international recognitions.

Sánchez has also prefaced books, among others by Mercè Rodoreda (broken mirror), Yukio Mishima (The sailor who emerged from the grace of the sea), Stevenson (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), a collection of poems by Alfonsina Storni (El País) or In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (El País).

According to the criteria of The Trust Project