Argentine writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, a former International Booker Prize finalist, has won this year’s prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, which awards the year’s best novel published in Spanish written by a woman. 

Created by the Guadalajara Book Fair in 1993, this year’s prize went to Cabezon Camara’s for her most recent novel, Las niñas del naranjel. The book is based on the true story of Catalina de Erauso — famously known as ‘The lieutenant nun’— a military officer, nun, and writer who lived in 17th century Spain and South America as a man, by the name of Alonso Díaz Ramírez de Guzmán.

In the novel, Antonio escapes death on the stake thanks to his Virgin of the Orange Tree. While fulfilling his promise to write to his aunt, who was the prioress of the convent where she was a novice, Antonio recalls his cloistered past and faces a wandering present as a muleteer, soldier, and page. Throughout his journey, he protects two girls, Michi and Mitãkuña, whose incisive questions force him to recognize the deep scars of a land devastated by colonial greed.

According to the jury, Cabezon Camara’s reimagining of Erauso’s life “manages to inject a new imaginative and symbolic force to the historic novel genre, depicting the discourses and the violence that forged the New World.” 

“The novel dynamites the well-established storytelling form that is based on the experiences of a virile perspective, incorporating a voice that pays attention to the sensuality and hostility of the landscape, the ambitions and fears of the characters, as well as the corruption of the bodies that, in an unprejudiced way, Cabezón Cámara describes straigh-forwardly and masterfully,” added the ruling of the jury formed by Ana García Bergua, Diana Sánchez and Emiliano Monge.

The jury also highlighted that the narrative “explores a fabulous cadence in the combination of Spanish with Guaraní and the theological baroqueisms of the 17th century, to create a unique language with a particular rhythm.”

A key figure in contemporary Latin American literature, Cabezón Cámara is a University of Buenos Aires graduate who collaborated in several media outlets like Página12, Le Monde diplomatique, and Revista Ñ, and sat as a Culture editor for Clarín newspaper. Ever since the publication of her first novel Slum Virgin, she has explored marginal characters and themes like prostitution, the gaucho tradition, and trans women. Her novel The Adventures of China Iron —  a re-write of the classic folk poem Martín Fierro from a feminist, LGBT, postcolonial point of view — was praised by The New York Times and shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Both novels have been translated into English and published by Charco Press. 

Former Argentine winners of the Sor Juana Prize include Sylvia Iparraguirre, Tununa Mercado, Claudia Piñeiro, Inés Fernández Moreno, and Camila Sosa Villada, among others. 

The 2024 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award ceremony will take place at the 38th Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) on December 4 at 6 p.m. at the Juan Rulfo Auditorium.