This Wednesday, the work where the time of the writer and cultural manager Ana Lilia Cepeda took you Appeal when entering along with the protagonist in remote times in the history of the center of Mexico City from more recent times ”, according to the qualifying jury.
In the minutes issued at the facilities of the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana, it also stressed that the winning work, which was imposed among a total of 42 candidates, “combines with good fortune fantastic elements with the realism of recognizable spaces.”
This jury was made up of the Andrés Ramírez editor, on behalf of Penguin Random House, Casa del Seal Grijalbo, and writers Mónica Lavín and Eduardo Antonio Parra.
In this regard, Mónica Lavín stressed that where time “has two edges, the possibility of learning of serious documentation, but very accessible to the reader”, whose protagonist, Victoria, a young woman who questions her present and therefore her past “It offers very nice parliaments from our 21st century on what it is to look Author makes the floor, with our roots. ”
For his part, Eduardo Antonio Parra recognized in the work a sense of humor “which is almost always absent in historical novels. This is a novel that makes you laugh and have fun at the same time you know. I am convinced that it will become a kind of guide of the Historic Center of Mexico City. ”
The Cloustro de Sor Juana – Grijalbo historical novel award is equipped with a bag of 150,000 pesos and the José López Portillo y Rojas Medal. The work will be published by Grijalbo in the second half of the year.
The hidden passions of the center
The winner Ana Lilia Cepeda linked a remote via after learning about the ruling. He said that the novel offers a tour of fantastic moments in the downtown area of the Mexican capital, from the most romantized to tortuous passages that marked us. After all, he said, “in the history of the center there are always hidden passions.”
Also, the novel in question bases many of its stories on the historical vestiges recently found in the bowels of the center, from the 2006 location of the heart of the Viceroy Baltasar of Zúñiga Guzmán Sotomayor and Mendoza, Marqués de Valero, inside a metal urn In a crypt of the temple of Corpus Christi, on Juárez del Centro Avenue, until the same year that year of the monolith of Tlaltecuhtli, goddess of the Earth, as part of the expansion of excavations in the surrounding area of the Templo Mayor.
“A country that does not know its past, has no viability of the future. We have to honor that past, to have a healthier future and not repeat the same mistakes, ”said the author, who has also taken care of several of the heritage rescues in the city center. For example, as president of the Conmemoration Foundation, she coordinated the recovery of the Rivas Mercado house during the last decade.
Likewise, editor Andrés Ramírez stressed that the prize in question “is a very important literary exercise for writers to display talents that are different from those of a conventional novel. As an editorial, this genre is important because it brings us a lot to other types of readers interested in history. In addition, seen through this present, it makes it much more attractive. ”
Sister Juana -Grijalbo Cloister of Historical Novel Prize
All winning works
- 2019: Juana Inés’ slave – Ignacio García Casas
- 2021: son of Tigre – Mario Heredia
- 2023: Venus sad – Ana Romero
- 2025: where time takes time – Ana Lilia Cepeda
