Irene Solà’s latest novel, Et vaig donar ulls i vas mirar les tenebres, translated into Dutch by Adri Boon, has become the first work in Catalan to win the 2025 European Literature Prize of the Netherlands. This prize honours the finest contemporary European novel published in Dutch translation during the previous year.

Irene Solà and Adri Boon will receive the award on Saturday, 8 November, during the Crossing Border festival. The author and the translator of the winning work will each receive a prize of €10,000.

The Institut Ramon Llull has supported both the translation and the international promotion of the work. Furthermore, Adri Boon participated in the translators’ seminar on Irene Solà organised by the IRL last year at the Faberllull residency in Olot. This September, the translator will attend a residency at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona to translate the work of Montserrat Roig, likewise with the support of the Institut.

The publishing house Uitjeverij Cossee, which published Irene Solà’s second novel last year, released Ramona Adéu by Montserrat Roig this June and plans to publish two further works by the same author: El temps de les cireres in October and L’hora violeta in February of next year. In addition, the publisher will take part in the forthcoming edition of the Llull Fellowship, which will take place during La Setmana del Llibre en Català between 21 and 26 September.

In its verdict, the jury highlighted that this is “a generous novel in which the whole of life is at once celebrated and cursed, rendered with great style. Misery and ecstasy, love and hatred, cruelty and humour, angel and devil: everything and everyone collide, until only death can follow. Solà’s language is untamed, her compositions taut, her women utterly unforgettable. And it is through the richness of Adri Boon’s translation that we are able to experience this novel in all its wildness and generosity.”

The jury was chaired by Niña Weijers and comprised booksellers Annette Breithaupt (Van der Velde Bookshop) and Maartje van Tessel (Bijleveld Bookshop), journalist and essayist Jan Postma, and Karol Lesman, translator of last year’s award-winning work (Empusion by Olga Tokarczuk).

The 2025 European Literature Prize of the Netherlands, now in its fifteenth edition, is an initiative of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, the academic and cultural platform SPUI25, the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, and the bookshop Athenaeum | Scheltema. The prize is financially supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature.