"A pause amid the sound and the fury"

"A useful work, one that is easy to read and hard to forget." This is how the philosopher and writer Fernando Savater defined the work El puño invisible. Arte, revolución y un siglo de cambios culturales (or, The invisible fist. Art, revolution and a century of cultural changes), published by Taurus. On Sunday evening in Guadalajara, the author, Carlos Granés received the Isabel Polanco International Essay Prize.

The book moves with ease over the 20th century's manifold artistic vanguard movements - arguing that, though the century's political revolutions failed, its cultural revolutions prevailed and define our present time.

Ignacio Polanco, the president of the Fundación Santillana and of Grupo PRISA, which owns EL PAÍS, presented Granés with a sculpture by Martín Chirino, emblematic of the $100,000 prize, at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, noting the cultural role played by his publishing house in Latin America, where it is present in more than 20 countries.

Savater called the book, which beat out 145 entries, "a pause amid the sound and fury of the 20th century, a masterly and vibrant reflection on an extraordinary age, in which so much that was won and lost defines our world today."

The author explained that the book was conceived when he wondered what the revolutionary impulse was: "What motivates a group of individuals to challenge reality, to try to bring heaven down to earth." He imagined a book that would deal with politics, religion and art, but soon had an insight that changed his plans. "The rebellion and transgression of the vanguard movement had not been buried by history. They had only been transmuted, and were present in our attitudes today, in what we like and don't like, even in what we watch on television."

"The positive consequence," he says, "has been the wider margins of liberty since the 1950s. The negative one: the emphasis on the self, which has degenerated into an egotism and a disinterest in the common wealth, the res publica, which has worn the fabric of society thin."