Azucre
Sugar | Pepitas de Calabaza, 2021
» 2022 Espartaco Prize for Best Historical Novel
» Almudena Grandes Award
» NoLlegiu Award 2021
» Librerías Navarras Prize 2022
Galicia, 1853. The rainiest winter in history has destroyed the crops and a cholera epidemic begins to ravage the population.
Orestes, “Coughs”, el Rañeta and Trasdelrío, “Chewed”, Tomás el de Coruña and many other youngsters who long for a better future for themselves and their families decide to leave their homes and head for Cuba to make a living on the sugar cane plantations. But this journey has in store for them an ordeal that their candid minds would never have been able to imagine.
Azucre is the fictionalised account of the true story of the 1.700 young people who travelled to Cuba to work and ended up sold into slavery by Urbano Feijóo de Sotomayor, a Galician living on the island who, taking advantage of his fellow countrymen’s situation of need, promoted a campaign of white colonisation and substitution of labour brought from Africa.
These pages, which are shockingly beautiful, hypnotic and evocative, far removed from official reports and cold analyses, give voice to those who were silenced in this terrible event which at the time constituted a real scandal and which memory cannot ignore.
«Azucre is a journey into horror, and so well written that you don't want to finish it.» Juan Tallón
«There are lives whose fate clearly shows the misery of the human being. They usually belong to humble people, so we rarely know of their existence. Fortunately, Bibiana Candia rescue’s from oblivion the story of the Galicians enslaved in Cuba in the 19th century. Behind her beautiful prose, we can hear the voice of all those who undertook that journey without knowing what awaited them on the other side. More than being read, Azucre is listened to.» Rebeca García Nieto
«Azucre is a text about hope colliding with disillusionment and shattering in the distance.» Emma Pedreira
«An impeccable fictionalised story. Azucre is a delicate tale that whispers things in your ear. It shakes, evokes and returns. The brilliance of Azucre, a transparent field in which the most human feelings and thoughts intermingle, lies in the ability to narrate the complexity of anonymous realities through a simple dozen stories with their own names, faces and voices: it has a special beauty.» Jot Down
France: Le Typhon; Galician: Kalandraka; Italia: Cencellada; Poland: Artrages; Russia: Eksmo