The Institute of Puerto Rican Literature announced this month that López Nieves’s novel El corazón de Voltaire (Voltaire’s Heart) is the winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Prize). This is the second time López Nieves has won this prize, and the first time a single author has been given this award twice. In 2000, he won the Premio Nacional de Literatura for La verdadera muerte de Juan Ponce de León (The true death of Juan Ponce de León), a collection of short stories. The prize consists of $6000.

“I really did not expect to win this award twice since it has never happened before,” a surprised López Nieves told Críticas. “I feel like this novel has a life of its own.” El corazón de Voltaire tells the story of Roland Luziers, a professor of genetics at the Sorbonne, and Dr. Ysabeau de Vassy, a historian, who set out to establish the authenticity of Voltaire’s heart, which rests at Paris’s Bibliotheque Nationale.

López Nieves is also the author of the historical novel Seva (Editorial Cordillera, 2003), and Escribir para Rafa (To Write for Rafa), a collection of short stories.