Nil Forcada's 'Teoria del ridícul' Wins Andorra Essay Prize as Fictional Literary Hoax

Nil Forcada's *Teoria del ridícul*—a literary essay that doubles as elaborate fiction—has been published by Marinara following its win of the Andorra Essay Prize in November 2024.

The book masquerades as a scholarly examination of Mael Palau, a fabricated Andorran writer born in the late 1940s and imagined as a contemporary of Antoni Morell. Forcada constructs Palau's life through invented texts, letters, and diaries, blending them with analysis of his nonexistent works. Real figures like Josep Maria Ubach, Toni Sala, and Jan Arimany appear as characters tied to textual recovery and reinterpretation.

Palau emerges as Morell's antithesis: a penniless outsider who spends little time in Andorra, observing the Principat from afar with ironic detachment. While Morell delved into historical fiction, Palau supposedly pursued science fiction. Forcada explained the contrast: they would be "like night and day."

At its core, the work probes writing itself as farce and imitation. "The whole book ends up talking about the act of writing and the sham of writing, the fact that you're always copying someone else," Forcada said. A fictional diary entry attributed to Palau captures this: writing stems from "pure arrogance," an "imposture" where "the notion of the ridiculous constitutes us as individuals."

Forcada admits Palau "never existed," crafting the narrative in a neutral, third-person scholarly voice across nine sections. It draws from unfinished projects, his own texts, and deep nods to authors like Borges and Cortázar. Even the foreword by Chema Díaz is apocryphal, dismissing the book as worthless.

The project evolved from a half-started idea, completed in two months for the prize submission. It builds on Forcada's earlier award-winning analysis of poet Manel Gibert's unusual stories. One of Palau's supposed texts shares the book's title, framing writing as mediated ridicule.