abstract
Literary awards for published works, that participated in contests held in the first and second decades of the 21th century, have foregrounded the novel. Juries responsible for the awards are constituted by literary critics, writers and literary scholars, who categorize the chosen books. Therefore to examine the winning novels provides an understanding of what is judged more representative within contemporary Brazilian literary fiction. In order to come to these conclusions, we examined a period of five years (2010-2014) of awards granted to Brazilian novels. Such examination enables us to identify the most frequent authors and works, highlighting aspects as such as the author’s gender, ethnicity and age group, as well as the region of Brazil they live or from which they originated. It also allows us to consider the structural aspects of the prizewinning novels, such as the modality chosen, the nature of the protagonists, the point of view, the space and time of the action as well as the most noteworthy themes.
Keywords:
literary awards; novel; autofiction; autodiegetic narrative