Waugh scholar, author and professor of English Philology at the University of La Rioja in Spain, Carlos Villar Flor, has won an award for a new novel, his fifth.  According to the Spanish newspaper La Rioja, Villar Flor:
… has just won the JosĂ© MarĂa Pereda award, granted by the Cantabrian Government, with his short novel ‘Descubre por quĂ© te persigo‘ (‘Guess why I am chasing you’).., in which Villar Flor has chosen to reverse the classic structure of the thriller. “The classic thriller usually starts with a murder and the reader does not care much about the victim because, in fact, he has not had much time to meet him. But in my novel it happens in reverse, the victim, still alive, has to find the reasons why someone wants to kill him.”
Villar Flor has written and lectured extensively on the works of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene and has appeared at several conferences devoted to these writers, including those sponsored by this Society. He also organized a conference in 2003 at the University of La Rioja and co-edited its proceedings published as Waugh Without End. More recently, he was co-author of the critical biography of Waugh’s military career and writings entitled In the Picture. The newspaper article concludes
“I have four more novels in mind and I’ve been working on a biographical study of Graham Greene for four years relating to his trips to Spain.” However it is not Greene, but Evelyn Waugh who is the author to whom more time has been dedicated as translator and popularizer of his work. And he is also very fond of the English sense of humor: “It is an understated humor, and there enters the concept of irony, which is very rich and complex, and I find it very interesting. As with Oscar Wilde’s aphorisms.”
The Spanish language article has been translated by Google with some edits.Â
UPDATE (19 December 2016): Carlos Villar Flor has offered some improvements in the translations cited. These have been incorporated in a revised version of the post. Many thanks to Carlos for these suggestions.
