International Dublin Literary Award: Mexican author Valeria Luiselli wins for ‘Lost Children Archive’

Mexican author Valeria Luiselli has won this year’s Dublin Literary Award for her work, Lost Children Archive. The American policy of keeping children away from their parents at the Mexican-American border was the origin of this fictional novel. It also won the Rathbones Folio prize in 2020.

“I’m very happy – very relieved, more than anything. It’s been a year of very slow work for me, a year of struggling with writing because my kids are not at school, so I’m in the whirlpool of the household all day…It felt like an encouragement, like someone was saying, ‘Carry on, do your work, this is what you’re meant to be doing. Just focus and continue,” she told The Guardian.

And the 2021 #DubLitAward #WINNER ✨is….

Lost Children Archive by @ValeriaLuiselli. Our warmest congrats to Valeria.@AAKnopf @4thEstateBooks @HarperCollins

Proudly sponsored @DubCityCouncil | @dubcilib @ILFDublin @DublinCityofLit pic.twitter.com/qKwKLGoU20

— DUBLIN Literary Award (@DublinLitAward) May 20, 2021

Colm Tóibín, a previous recipient of this award, extolled Luiselli’s work and said that her book “tells an old story, the one that Cervantes told … and Cormac McCarthy, the story of what happens to the human spirit on the road, how a long journey puts in jeopardy what was stable and agreed upon”.

Considered one of the richest literary awards in the world, The International Dublin Literary Award includes prize money of €100,000 (approx ₹89,27,300). It is awarded to a novel written or translated into English around the globe. The books are nominated by libraries.