Our mission is to bring Africa and Spain closer
Through outreach, educational, economic, and cultural activities, we foster mutual understanding and strengthen Hispanic African relations.
The story of a confused traveller, written by a writer from Jaen, wins Casa África's first short story competition
31/07/2013
The writer from Jaen María del Mar Horno Garcia won the first prize of the first edition of Purorrelato, a short story competition organised by Casa Africa this year, with a lyrical text called The Traveller, where magic realism joins up with oral tradition, which speaks of the power of travel to open the mind. The second prize of this contest is for a Salamancan who lives in Madrid, Isidro Catela Marcos, with The green life of elephants, a surreal and delightful little fable that shows that there is no single discourse on Africa and involves a cyclist in Nairobi. The third prize goes to the Colombian Santiago Trujillo, with a hyper-brief text called Revelation, with an enormous evocative capacity despite its brevity and which takes place on a dance floor. This time Casa África received about 800 micro scripts in Spanish, French and Portuguese, from the four corners of the earth and written in countries like the Arab Emirates, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Kenya, South Africa, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Purorrelato was created in order to promote literary creation to encourage us to feel and think about Africa and show us its different realities, always from the perspective of bringing us nearer to the continent and far away from stereotypes and clichés . The competition notice started on 1st April and ended on 1st July. Writers like Antonio Lozano and Eduvigis Hernández and specialists in African literature like Manuel Serrat and Johari Gautier Carmona were part of the jury. The winning work received a prize of 500 euros. The second and third prizes received gift vouchers of 100 euros sponsored by Librería Canaima to use on their online shop. All the prize winners received a lot with publications published as part of, Casa África's Literature Collection. Casa África will publish a digital book with the 50 best short stories that have been submitted to this contest, which will joined with those sent by renowned writers like Justo Bolekia and Berbel.
