An extraordinary "literary revelation": Ana María Matute, the Destino group and the Nadal Prize

Abstract

This article aims to analyze and put into context the relationships built between the novelist from Barcelona Ana María Matute, Destino magazine, the homonymous publishing house and the Eugenio Nadal Prize for Novels. We will study her presence, as a finalist and winner, in the history of Nadal Prize; the critical reception that the weekly magazine Destino designed; the interesting construction of her public image as a woman writer based on the interviews granted at the time; and how these first three decades of literary career drew the most important thematic and formal lines of Matute’s work.