Taking into account national and international politics and networks of prestige, The Politics of Literary Prestige analyses the relationship between literary prizes, politics and the reception of literature from Spanish America. Covering state-sponsored and publisher-run prizes and major awards such as the Biblioteca Breve Prize, credited with launching the ‘boom’ that marked worldwide interest in Spanish American literature in the late 1950s and 1960s, the Premio Cervantes, and the Nobel Prize, this book examines how prizes have shaped what we know about Spanish American literature. It untangles the inner workings of literary prizes in Spanish-speaking contexts, proposes the existence of a prizes network, and demonstrates that attitudes to cultural prizes are not universal but are culturally determined.Through specific examples, Sarah E.L. Bowskill introduces the different functions prizes serve at a national level and on the world stage. She draws attention to states that have tried to use prizes for political purposes and sheds light on how non-state-run prizes and their winners balance cultural and political agendas in an attempt to promote women’s and indigenous rights. This book draws on a range of sources – including speeches and interviews by winning authors, judges' statements, documents that establish the prizes, their rules and regulations, and newspaper reports about prize-giving ceremonies, as well as textual analysis of the literature – to reveal the roles prizes have played in Spanish American politics as well as in the formation of the Spanish American cultural field.