All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World by Stuart B. Schwartz (Yale University Press, $40, 9780300125801/0300125801), published in June, has won the inaugural Cundill International Prize and Lecture in History at McGill University. The award, sponsored by the Cundill Foundation and McGill, Montreal, Canada, goes to "to an individual who has published a book determined to have had (or likely to have) a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history." The Cundill Prize is the largest nonfiction historical literature award in the world and carries a prize of US$75,000.
Jury member Rogert Chartier commented: "The topic is engaging--one of the main issues of our time: tolerance. The research is outstanding, based on a long familiarity and original readings of inquisitorial archives all around the world, the scope of the study is worldwide, crossing our interest or preoccupations with globalization, and the lesson is profound: even for the humblest folk and within the worst situation it is possible to stand for generous and strong beliefs."
Schwartz is a professor of history at Yale.
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Catalan novelist Juan Marsé won the €125,000 (US$158,625) Cervantes prize, "the Spanish-language equivalent of the Nobel prize for literature," according to the Guardian. The award will be presented by King Juan Carlos next April 23, the anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes.
Marsé was honored "for a body of work focusing on the hardships of life in post-civil war Spain," including Últimas tardes con Teresa (Last Evenings with Teresa), Si te dicen que caí (If They Tell You I Fell) and Rabos de lagartija (Lizard Tails).
"The density and intensity of his writing, and the imaginative process, are what mark him out as a novelist," said Nick Caistor, his English translator. "He has created worlds of the imagination set against the often horrible realities of Spain after the civil war. His characters always escape to the world of fiction, when the world outside is grey and depressing, and he's particularly good at seizing the imaginative world of children."