The Planeta book prize 2011

The Planeta, named after its sponsor, the biggest Spanish media and publishing house, is probably the most generous prize in literature (600,000 EUR) after the Nobel. The article by Rosa Mora from El País could be translated like this:

"Brazilian" Planeta to Javier MoroThe author won the prize with a chronicle of Emperor Pedro I. who won independence for Brazil - Inma Chacón, runner-up with the novel "Time of sand"
Javier Moro wins the 60th edition of the Premio Planeta (601,000 EUR) with a novel whose title will be "The empire are you", a fascinating chronicle of the life of Emperor Pedro I of Brazil (1798-1834), appointed Prince Regent by his father, Joao VI of Portugal.Pedro I joined the cause of independence and was appointed first Perpetual Defender of Brazil, and then emperor. He had a very hectic life and a reign that lasted nine years. History and adventures are mixed in this novel, topics that equally passionate Javier Moro (Madrid, 1955). The son of a Spanish airline executive and a French mother, the writer has traveled since very young to Africa, Asia and the Americas. He studied History and Anthropology and worked as a researcher for Dominique Lapierre and Pierre Collins.His first novel, "Paths of Freedom", appeared in 1992. Moro traveled for three years in the Amazon by plane, boat, bus and even on foot to reconstruct the story of Chico Mendes, a humble rubber tapper who became an international symbol of environmental protection. It was followed by "Jaipuur's foot", in which two young men, one injured in an accident, and another survivor of the Khmer Rouge era come together to face a pessimistic future. We also find the spirit of resistance and hope in The Mountains of the Buddha, which takes place in Tibet.As one can see, Javier Moro does not avoid the hard and controversial issues, as became apparent in Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, which he wrote with Dominique Lapierre. It discusses the toxic gases that escaped in 1984, from a Dow Chemical factory in the Indian city of Bhopal and killed 30,000 people.There followed Passion India in which Moro reconstructs the love and betrayal between the Andalusian Anita Delgado and the Maharajah of Kapurthala, in northern India. In his latest work, "The Red sari", we also find history and adventures: a European is involved in the intrigues of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The novel caused irritation in India, where they burned copies of the book and portraits of the author. [Though it is unclear for this blogger how they evaluated it as he could not find any English edition on Amazon...]Inma Chacón (Zafra, Badajoz, 1954), twin sister of the late Dulce Chacón [the more famous writer of the two], was runner-up last night (150,250 euros) with the novel "Time of sand", which portrays three women in a complex family in Spain in the early decades the twentieth century.Chacón made herself known as an author in 2005, two years after the death of her sister, with "The Indian Princess", a novel that Dulce had started. She then published "The Filipinianas", about a saga of aristocratic and travelling women. This year she has published "Nick", in which a young woman creates a fake profile on Facebook to attract a guy  from her neighborhood whom she likes.

People here say that the runner-up is normally the worthier novel; the first price goes to the bigger name author and guarantees a good profit on the novel. I don't know how credible this theory is, as this year six of the ten finalists had presented their entries under a pseudonym.