The Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez will be recognized with the Black and Criminal Award, during the eighth edition of Tenerife Noir, with which the Atlantic Festival of the Black Genre rewards the extensive literary career dedicated to the genre. During the activity, the novelist will expose the role of black literature as a complaint.
“Proud of the Tenerife Noir Black and Criminal Novel Award for my literary career in the black genre,” Ramírez said on social networks. The writer will be awarded this coming Saturday, March 18, and will also share a space with the Canarian writers José Luis Correa and Javier Hernández Velázquez in the act entitled “the black novel as a complaint resource.”
Related news: Sergio Ramírez will receive the “Erasmo Rotterdam” Award in Spain
The festival highlights Ramírez, who was recently declared stateless by Daniel Ortega, as an abundant creator of literary works, four of them in the noir genre. Among the most outstanding are Castigo divino (1988), Hammett in 1990 and Tongolele did not know how to dance (Alfaguara, 2021). The novelist resorts to the noir genre to introduce political criticism in which Ramírez reflects his position on the political evolution of the country in recent years. The latter has cost him exile and criminalization by the Nicaraguan presidential couple.
“Tongolele did not know how to dance” is withheld by the dictatorship and its commercialization in the country is prohibited. That novel, which keeps the dictatorship enraged, is the one that once again put Ramírez under the eye of the world of literature, receiving awards not only for the quality of his works but also for the “political courage” of he.
Sergio Ramírez has obtained, among others, the following literary prizes: Dashiell Hammett International Novel Prize (1990), Alfaguara Prize (1998), Laure Bataillon Prize (1998, for the best foreign novel published in France); José María Arguedas Latin American Novel Award (2000, awarded by Casa de las Américas in Havana); Carlos Fuentes Award (2014, for literary creation in the Spanish language); Panama Negro Award (2017) and Cervantes Award (2017).
The writer currently lives in exile due to the persecution of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. The dictatorship in 2021 issued an arrest warrant against the novelist for allegedly “inciting hatred and violence.”
In addition, the regime declared 94 exiled opponents “traitors to the homeland”, including Ramírez and also the writer Gioconda Belli, stripping them of their nationality and disqualifying them for life from holding public office.
This measure came after 222 political prisoners were released in Nicaragua and expelled to the United States, in addition to having their nationality withdrawn.
