Saison der Wirbelstürme
Fernanda Melchor | Angelica Ammar
Internationaler Literaturpreis 2019
Laudatory speech
„Es heißt, dass sie in Wirklichkeit gar nicht gestorben sei, weil Hexen nicht so leicht sterben.“
Jury’s comments
In thrilling, furious sentences, Fernanda Melchor tells the story of a femicide in rural Mexico. She examines the people who congregated around the victim – a witch – until her death: the young men in search of cocaine and cheap sex, and the even younger women who came to her looking for illegal abortions. In tracing the events that led up to the gruesome crime, Melchor reveals the psychological and socioeconomic mechanisms that underpin the sugarcane-surrounded town of La Matosa. The titular hurricanes not only hint at the prevailing conditions in the town, but, thanks to the power of the author’s language, even seem to descend upon us. Angelica Ammar has brought these raging storms of prose into German with extraordinary ingenuity.
— Daniel Medin
Author: Fernanda Melchor
Fernanda Melchor was born in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1982, and lives in Puebla. A novelist and journalist whose crónicas (journalistic reports) have been awarded numerous prizes, she is considered one of the most talented writers of her generation. Her debut novel, Falsa liebre (False Hare), was published in 2013, as was her collection of crónicas Aquí no es Miami (This is Not Miami). Her second novel, Saison der Wirbelstürme (Hurricane Season), is published simultaneously in several countries, including the USA, Italy, France and Great Britain.
Translator: Angelica Ammar
Angelica Ammar was born and raised in Munich. After a long stay in Ghana, she studied Romance languages and ethnology in Munich, Madrid and Paris, where she lived for ten years. She moved to Barcelona in 2007. Her debut novel Tolmedo was awarded the Jürgen-Ponto-Stiftung literature prize in 2006. Her second novel, Die Zeit der grünen Mandeln, appeared in 2010. She has translated Sergio Pitol, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rita Indiana, Gioconda Belli, Eduardo Galeano and Horacio Quiroga, among others.