Writer, translator and novelist Julio Travieso Serrano received this Saturday the National Literature Award 2021 from the hands of the Cuban Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, in the Nicolás Guillén Hall of the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress.

Radio Enciclopedia reports that the president of the jury, Miguel Barnet, Honorary President of UNESCO and of the jury of the National Literature Prize 2021, in the reading of the official minutes stressed that the award was unanimously granted to the Cuban author.

Jesús David Curbelo, member of the jury, highlighted the merits of works such as El polvo en el oro and El cuaderno de los disparates.

He also recognized Travieso's vast trajectory as a novelist, translator and professor, which places him among the greatest Cuban storytellers of the second half of the 20th century up to the present.

The Havana-born author expressed his gratitude for the award along with a work by plastic artist Jose Luis Fariñas, which distinguish his vocation to letters for 56 years while acknowledging the authorities of the Cuban Book Institute.

"I have worked hard -he said- in that long term and I can say that I feel satisfied, for obtaining the most honorable of the awards in the thorny and fertile field where we sow our work".

Travieso's literary creation is known in Latin American and European countries as he was awarded the Mazatlan Prize in Mexico, the novel prize granted by Casa de las Americas as well as the Distinction for National Culture.

His work has been translated into German, Bulgarian, Czech, Georgian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, French, Ukrainian, Italian, Portuguese and English.

Also present at the ceremony were the president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, Luis Morlote, Juan Rodríguez Cabrera, president of the Cuban Book Institute, and personalities of the stature of Nancy Morejón and Reynaldo González, who already hold the distinction created in 1982 by the Ministry of Culture.