Roberto Chuit Roganovich presented his book, winner of the 2024 Clarín Novel Prize.

Escorted by two friends , both writers and critics, the winner of the 2024 Clarín Novel Prize , Roberto Chuit Roganovich from Córdoba, presented his novel Si sinteras bajo los pies las estructuras mayores (Alfaguara) this evening at the 49th Buenos Aires International Book Fair. To his right, Juan Mattio ; to his left, Ricardo Romero ; readers and essential presences for the protagonist , who holds a PhD in Literature and is a researcher at Conicet. "The novel is motivated in some way by professional reading," stated the award winner.

At the beginning, Matilde Sánchez, editor-in-chief of Ñ magazine, recalled that the jury, composed of Samanta Schweblin, Alberto Fuguet, and Mariana Enriquez, had unanimously voted in favor of this book, presented under the pseudonym María Batman, from among 650 texts from Argentina, Spain, and various Latin American countries. She also noted that the previous year, another Cordoban had received the award: Luciano Lamberti , who was present in the room and a major influence on Chuit Roganovich.

The author himself began by praising the presence of his friends and Lamberti in the room. "I feel like every time I sit down to write, I'm thinking about what he might object to in the text," he said, pointing to the seat occupied by Lamberti, whose workshop Chuit Roganovich attended.

Then, regarding Mattio, he recalled his years of study: "My training in modern literature was influenced by some magazines published in Buenos Aires and also in Córdoba, but above all by Juan Mattio's Facebook account, where I would go to see what was happening regarding this or that work . I am very happy today to consider him a friend," he indicated.

Finally, about the writer and editor Ricardo Romero, he explained: "He was in charge of reviewing this novel when it was 40% complete. He has written key works for me in Argentine literature such as Big Rip (2021) and El conserje y la eternidad (2017), which I believe is the second best vampire in the history of literature after Dracula."

Mattio read some thoughtful notes on the novel and stated that "in the structure, in the montage, lies what I understand as the enormous power of this story. That labyrinth of temporalities where, what we could call an event, is viewed and interpreted in the light of an era, which is like saying, in the light of a structure of feeling."

The critic referred to the four temporalities articulated in Roberto Chuit Roganovich's novel and the uniqueness of each in terms of themes and the register the author chooses to narrate them. "The temporalities intersect, knowledge and perspectives are transmitted, the threads of each era are tied to the next, and they are fundamental because they contain the ghost of the novel, in these small remnants of the past in the present," he shared.

"There is something, an opaque matter in which we live, that recognizes us and exceeds us . The tremor that signifies that there is no possible synchronicity between human time and cosmic time. That we are too small, motes of dust. We are surrounded by disturbing and elusive presences. Roberto's novel makes religion, science, and dreams try to capture that something," he read.

And he concluded: "In order to write this beautiful novel, Robi had to take risks. I mean, formal risks in the structure, syntactical risks in the construction of his voices, risk of his imagination to make all these temporalities intertwine. And in quite conservative moments, not only in political but also cultural, artistic or literary terms, risk has to be celebrated, because ultimately, if longing is what sustains us, risk is what allows us to approach, even for a moment, the abyss of mystery."

In turn, Ricardo Romero recounted the seed of this story in an equally intricate way: "I was lucky enough to read a first draft of the novel a couple of years ago. At that time, I could already recognize a truly beautiful novel, despite all its obscurities. In that first reading, the editing wasn't there yet, and reading it now allows me to see that this editing, the dialogue between the time periods, takes it to another level."

Romero related the novel to the weird or even to the new weird : "With the quotes and references it offers, one clearly recognizes the tradition with which the novel dialogues " and he assured that if the book "truly inscribes itself in this era and is a very contemporary novel , that comes hand in hand above all with the creature that summons this book, that creature that argumentatively and metaphorically is below the text and the earth. It is the nature of that creature that places us on another plane that exceeds the traditional weird ."

Another aspect that Ricardo Romero pointed out was that "it also poses a creature that is somehow amorphous, somehow infinite, somehow that inhabits a time and a deep space distinct from ours, but that no longer brings the dichotomy of good and evil . The novel dismantles that dichotomy between good and evil and that is a characteristic of the new weird when it presents itself and confronts otherness in conditions of mere threat, but is rather an otherness that yes, of course, intimidates us, scares us, but also fascinates us ."

Finally, the author took the floor and shared the inspiration behind his writing: " I feel that the concerns I worked with in the novel are contemporary concerns , especially for people of my generation, for whom the family is no longer a guiding concept, the State is no longer a concept, the figure of God is no longer a guiding concept, the figure of religion is no longer a guiding concept, science is no longer a guiding concept either. So, those of us in our thirties, even those in our late twenties, are completely lost in a fast-paced world, with nuclear threats, which confront us with a pain that goes beyond the human and that is calling for, I believe, in some way, forms of integration from above," he explained.

He also recalled that the difficulties of writing were primarily formal : "There is an arc, that of 1504, that is articulated from a second person, and it is very difficult to sustain a second person for many pages without it becoming either too plastic or too annoying. Another of the difficulties I encountered was the same difficulty, saving the differences, that Saer has encountered at some point, which is the attempt to test forms of the word that move away from the expressly human. There is a character named Julia, who is going through cancer. So, the concern was how a body that is disintegrating speaks because there is a cancer that is advancing. So I think that the arc of 1504 and the arc of 2036 were the ones that formally demanded the most work from me."

And Roberto Chuit Roganovich insisted on the element "that was behind this novel, which was the pain I was talking about, which is a pain that I believe is shared only by my generation and that is very difficult to transmit to our parents . This novel is something like a cry or some form of formalization of exasperation or despair. What I'm saying isn't very hopeful. But I feel that it's the way I'm finding today to give an answer to the lack of state, the lack of religion, the lack of science, the lack of family," he noted.