Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli, first woman to win the Rathbones Folio Prize

The Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli is the first woman to be awarded the Rathbones Folio Prize thanks to her book Lost Children Archive in which she addresses her work with young migrants in the Mexico-U.S. border.

The book, which was in the longlist of the Booker Prize 2019 and the Women’s Prize for Fiction , is the third written by Luiselli in Spanish and the first to be translated into English.

“We’re all fascinated for being able to celebrate the originality and braveness of the novel: A road trip, a documentary, a portrait of a family and of the U.S. border, a journey to the idea of home and belonging . This is a singular and overwhelming book, really extraordinary,” as asserted Paul Farley , president of the jury for the Rathbones Folio 2020 Prize.

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“ Lost Children Archive , by Valeria Luiselli, is a book that will have a powerful and enduring impact in readers everywhere,” said Paul Stockton , Rathbones’ CEO, about the novel.

Bea Carvalho

, from the Waterstones bookstore chain, asserted that the book “stands out as a particularly impressive work that exemplifies how exciting, intelligent, and creative contemporary fiction is.”

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The writers that have received this award are Raymond Antrobus , Richard Lloyd Parry , Hisham Matar , Akhil Sharma , and George Sanders , who was the first one to receive it.

Valeria Luiselli won another international award a couple of years ago. In 2018, she received the American Book Award for "Tell Me How It Ends" An Essay in 40 Questions , which also made her a runner-up for the National Book Critics Circle Awards . In that publication, she tells her experience as a translator in New York’s Migration Court for the defense of migrant children .

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