The Medici Prize was awarded to Canadian Kevin Lambert in France on Thursday May our joy endureto once again pay homage to this rising star of Quebec literature.
• Also read: Quebecer Kevin Lambert wins the December prize in France
• Also read: The Quebec author Kevin Lambert, at the center of a controversy, finalist for the Médicis Prize
The 31-year-old author had already won the December Prize at the end of October, another of the fall’s prestigious literary prizes, with this story of the downfall of an architect who was suddenly accused of driving the poor out of Montreal.
The novel was published in August by Editions du Nouvel Attila, a year after its Canadian edition by Héliotrope.
He won in the second round with six votes to four for the Moroccan Salma El Moumni and Adieu Tanger.
Kevin Lambert dropped out of the running for France’s prestigious Goncourt Prize in October following a controversy over his use of a sensitivity reader (a reader responsible for identifying elements in a book that could offend minorities).
The young Quebecer made headlines when his publisher, Le Nouvel Attila, revealed that he had employed a Canadian-Haitian proofreader to check whether a character of Haitian origin was credible.
The practice of sensitive reading, almost non-existent in France, divides the world of letters.
She was particularly condemned by the winner of the 2018 Goncourt, Nicolas Mathieu. “If we make the compass of our work professionals in sensibilities, experts in stereotypes, specialists in what is accepted and dared in a given moment, we are, to say the least, prudent,” he commented on his Instagram account in September.
Asked by AFP on Thursday about the controversy, the Quebec author replied that he saw it as a “misunderstanding.”
“Many people spoke without knowing the approach and thought there was a moral perspective, while I explained well why I worked this way. “It was actually a gesture of humility,” he explained.
“I think this shows that readers are interested in the result and that all these processes belong in the workshop, in the kitchen of the authors,” he added.
Two authors jointly won the Medici Prize for a foreign novel. The Portuguese Lidia Jorge for Misericordia (Métailié) and the South Korean Han Kang for Impossible adieux (Grasset) each received four votes in the seventh round.
The essay prize went to Laure Murat, lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for “Proust,” a family novel (edited by Robert Laffont), which won an absolute majority in the first round, the jury said Paris known restaurant La Méditerranée.