Carmen Laforet: Google Doodle to honor Spanish author on her 100th Birthday

Happy birthday! Carmen Laforet

Google dedicates a doodle to honor the 100th Birthday of a Spanish author Carmen Laforet. She is famous for her no-frills, realist prose. Carmen Laforet wrote in the period after the Spanish Civil War. Her works contributed to the school of Existentialist Literature and her first novel Nada continued the Spanish tremendismo literary style begun by Camilo José Cela with his novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte. She received the Premio Nadal in 1944.

Carmen Laforet Díaz was born on this day in 1921 in Barcelona, Spain. She spent her early years in the Canary Islands—a safe haven from the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). At 18, she returned with her family to Barcelona to study philosophy before moving to Madrid where she found a city scrambling to recover from domestic unrest.

It was in this tumultuous climate that Laforet wrote the manuscript for Nada--the story of an 18-year-old orphan’s struggle in post-war Barcelona. The story's candid existentialist narration portrayed the era’s harsh realities from a fresh perspective with a simple writing style, contrasting the convoluted prose that characterized many Spanish works at the time. Laforet’s innovative novel won her the first Nadal Prize, an award for unpublished authors that is today regarded as one of Spanish literature’s most prestigious honors. In addition to celebrating Laforet’s work, the prize included the publication of Nada, which immediately became a national sensation.

Laforet’s frank, realist prose reinvigorated the literary arts of a war-torn country while inspiring a new generation of women novelists. Along with several collections of short stories, a novella and travel books, Laforet published three additional novels into the late 1960s. Nada has never gone out of print, retaining its place in the nation's literary life.

Source: Google Doodles, Wikipedia

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