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Javier Montariz is on vacation in Menorca with his wife and relatives.

He is an unemployed journalist who, from time to time, is commissioned to write an article with which to mitigate the frustration and anxiety of unemployment.

Obsessed with evil, he has been asked to write some pages about the kidnapping and murder of councilman Miguel Ángel Blanco, which he covered for the newspaper in which he worked.

The stay in the paradisiac island is crossed with the terrible memories of what happened in Ermua in 1997. And then the tragedy happens that, for his misfortune, only Javier Montariz will be witness.

With this argument, Miguel Albero wrote his work "Mal", winner of the XXI Vargas Llosa Novel Prize, organized by the University of Murcia, the Caja Mediterráneo Foundation and the Vargas Llosa Chair of the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library Foundation.

The book has just been published by the publisher Aguaclara.

"Mal" competed with another 235 originals presented from 24 countries in Europe and America.

The jury, chaired by Francisco Florit and composed of Soledad Puértolas, JJ Armas Marcelo, José M.ª Pozuelo Yvancos and Germán Vega, highlighted the "narrative brilliance" of the work and "the rigor and strength with which it investigates the existence of evil and the forms it adopts. "

He also said that "it is a skillfully elaborated and well-documented story in which the author gets the reader to wonder about where the evil arises or what is in our deep nature that sometimes pushes us to it."

Miguel Albero, author of "Mal", was born in Madrid in 1967. He is a career diplomat and has been stationed in Dakar, Mendoza, Rome and San José.

He has been ambassador of Spain in Honduras and is currently cultural director of the National Library of Spain.

He has published three novels: "Principiantes" (Tusquets, 2004), "Ya queda menos" (ZUT, 2011) and Lenta venganza (ZUT, 2012);

four essays: "Enfermos del libro" (University of Seville, 2009 and 2014), "Instructions to fail better" (Abada, 2013), "Godot still does not come" (Málaga Essay Award, Pages of Espuma, 2016) and " Steal this book "(Abada 2017);

and three books of poetry: "Sobre todo nada" (Gil de Biedma Award, Visor, 2011), "Lista de esperas" (Abada, 2014) and "Volver" (Renacimiento, 2016).

Source: Universidad de Murcia