Yesterday’s news in the literary prize world, at least in the English-speaking world, was about the Women’s Fiction Prize , won not by Hilary Mantel but by A M Homes. Homes’ novels have often been controversial, particularly her novel The End of Alice, about a pedophile. She is one of those all too many writers I have not read but mean to read but, as I was expecting Mantel to win this prize (my curse on a writer – if I expect her/him to win, s/he won’t win), I had not got round to reading her but have now started May We Be Forgiven. However, another prize was announced yesterday, the Spanish Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras [The Prince of Asturias Literary Prize]. It was awarded to Antonio Muñoz Molina. I have a couple of his books on my site and hope to get round to a couple more shortly, including La noche de los tiempos (The Depths of Time) (image above left), which has been translated into English. Interestingly enough, he is the first Spanish-speaking winner since Augusto Monterroso in 2000, though, before that all the prizes since the prize’s foundation in 1981 were Spanish-speaking except for Günter Grass in 1999. Muñoz Molina is a first-class writer and, given that several of his books have been translated into English, should be better known in the English-speaking world.