The Prix Goncourt was awarded Monday by the 10 members of the Académie Goncourt in Paris to Eric Vuillard for writing the best prose work in French of the previous year.
While Vuillard will win a symbolic prize of only € 10 (around $ 12), his book “L’Ordre du jour” will receive the coveted Goncourt Band-Jacket, which leads to explosive book sales and well-known fame.
In “The Order of the Day”, Eric Vuillard reconstructs through fiction behind the scenes of the invasion of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. The chain of bookstores and co-sponsor of the Fnac Prize congratulated Vuillard for his Victoire.
Regarding the relationship between history and fiction, Vuillard said that “literature is meant to tell stories that are important and even threatening … There are forms of discovery that are specific to reading and writing. What I call fiction is the editing done by the collected data. “
The Renaudot Prize was also announced at the ceremony on Monday. Author Olivier Guez received the honor for his work, “The Disappearance of Joseph Menguele”.
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The jury selected Vuillard from a pre-selection of the third round comprising three other authors.
Yannick Haenel landed on the list of shirts for his novel “Hold on to your crown”, which follows an author determined to produce his screenplay on the life of Herman Melville. Véronique Olmi’s novel “Bakhita” tells the story of a 19th century slave who became a nun in Italy. And the fourth finalist, Alice Zeniter, tells the tangled and silent story of a family between France and Algeria in “The Art of Losing”.
Yannick Haenel, Véronique Olmi, Eric Vuillard and Alice Zeniter were the four finalists for the Prix Goncourt 2017
In 2016, Franco-Moroccan author Leila Slimani won the Goncourt Prize for her novel “Chanson Douce”, which means “soft song” or lullaby.
Other previous laureates include Michel Houellebecq (2010), Amin Maalouf (1993) and Patrick Modiano (1978).
114 years award
In addition to the two overall prose prose, the Académie Goncourt also awards four other genre-specific prizes on different dates to outstanding works of the current year in the categories first novel, short story, poetry and biography.
The Goncourt Prize has been awarded every year since 1903. Prose works written in French and published by French publishers during the past academic year are eligible. Participants do not necessarily have to be of French nationality. The publisher of the book submits the work to the academy, which then refines the selection through an oral vote over several rounds.
The academy was founded by 19th century French literary figure Edmond de Goncourt to encourage new talents in French literature. The Prix Goncourt is awarded in honor of Edmond’s brother, Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt.
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