Yesterday mid-afternoon Javier Cercas realized that his agenda for the next few weeks was getting complicated. It did not affect his trip to the Guadalajara International Book Fair (Mexico), where he will fly this Friday to continue his successful tour of Latin America. The madman of God at the end of the worldhis book about Pope Francis. The problem is that on December 10 he was going to receive an honorary doctorate at a French university, but yesterday he learned that that same day he will have to be somewhere else again: in Brussels and, more specifically, in the European Parliament. Because that day the European Book Prize will be awarded for the second time. The first was in 2016 by The imposterthis will be for The madman of God at the end of the world.
This award, promoted by the Esprit d’Europe association, was created in 2007 under the auspices of Jaques Delors. It recognizes novels and essays published in the countries of the European Union and its purpose is to promote the values of the community project. Some fundamental titles from recent decades appear in the list of winners: from post war, by Tony Judt, to the series of books on Mussolini by Antonio Scurati, through The amnesiacs, by Géraldine Schwarz, the cat fight, by Eduardo Mendoza, and East/West Street by Philippe Sands, among others. Last year the award-winning works were the travel book through Ukraine The future is at stake in Kyiv, by Karl Schlögel, and the novel The expansion (The expansion), by the Austrian writer Robert Menasse, one of whose issues are the negotiations for Albania’s entry into the European Union.
The award ceremony – worth 10,000 euros – will be at the European Parliament in Brussels on December 10, 2025 at six in the afternoon, in the presence of Sabine Verheyen, vice president of the European Parliament; Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament; Pascal Lamy, president of the Prize Sponsorship Committee, and Andrei Kurkov, president of the jury. “For me, this book by Javier Cercas has been a discovery. I had already read it before, but here I have found it very different, very alive. It is a book of conversations about religion, about Europe, Ukraine and Russia, about all of life. I have been very interested because there is a great passion in the book. (…) And, of course, it is a profoundly European book: it talks about the Vatican, Italy, the role of religion in Europe and in the world, the attempt of the Catholic Church to reconstruct its influence and above all about thought European,” Kurkov declared when announcing the award in Paris.
Upon receiving the Prize in 2016, Cercas read a speech focused on the spirit of the modern novel and ended by addressing the MEPs who were listening to him: “We, European novelists, must do our thing, which means following the example of Cervantes; but you, European politicians, can also follow his example: build a more Cervantes Europe, that is, more anti-dogmatic and more mixed, that is, freer, more prosperous, stronger and more united.” Then he had published a novel about the Enric Marco case, the impostor who had convinced everyone that he was a former deportee and that he had been discovered. On this occasion, the most international author of Spanish literature must talk about the book about Pope Benedict and his research on the Vatican and the faith seen accompanying the Pontiff on his trip to Mongolia.
The finalist works of this call, in addition to The madman of God at the end of the worldthere were two. The biography of Etty Hillesum, the other Dutch voice of the Holocaust along with Anne Frank and written by Judith Koelemeijer. AND If Russia wins (And if Russia wins), by the Viennese political scientist Carlo Masala, a novel that presents a disturbing scenario: in 2028 Russian troops attack the Baltic countries and Europe had not prepared itself militarily after the defeat of Ukraine. On this occasion, the president of the European Book Prize jury was the Ukrainian writer Andreï Kourkov. As on other occasions, a journalist from EL PAÍS has also been part of the jury. If in the first calls it was Xavier Vidal Folch and recently Marc Bassets, this time it was Álex Vicente.