It was the writer Jean-Baptiste Andrea who won the Goncourt Prize for “Veiller sur elle”, published this Tuesday in Paris by L’Iconoclaste. The crowning achievement of a work.
A consecration for a writer and a publisher that shows. Jean-Baptiste Andrea has just won the Goncourt Prize for “Veiller sur elle”, published by L’Iconoclaste. It tells the fate of Mimo, who was born a poor dwarf and was entrusted as an apprentice to a stone sculptor with no stature. He became the greatest sculptor in Italy and was impressed by the beauty of Viola Orsini.
As the heiress of a distinguished family, she spent her childhood in the shadow of a Genoese palace. “Veiller sur elle” is a reflection on the rise of fascism and the value of art, a metaphor for an unforgiving society and is already enjoying great success in bookstores.
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“It’s an extraordinary moment and I didn’t think I would ever experience this in my life,” exclaimed Jean-Baptiste Andrea at lunchtime near Drouant, the Paris restaurant where the Goncourt has traditionally been awarded since 1914.
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“I think of all the children who dream about it and say to themselves: I can’t do it. I want to tell them: Be unreasonable.” “Art is freedom. I have always believed in romance, romance never died,” he added.
Last year, the big favorite “The Mage of Kremlin” by Giuliano da Empoli, champion of Gallimard, was beaten after 14 rounds and with the deciding vote of the jury president Didier Decoin by Brigitte Giraud and “Vivre vite” published in Flammarion editions.
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The Renaudot Prize for Ann Scott
The Renaudot Prize was awarded on Tuesday to Ann Scott for her novel “Les insolents,” published by Calmann-Lévy, about a forty-year-old woman who leaves Paris.
The novel tells of the arrival “in the middle of nowhere” of Alex, a film music composer, who decides to leave the capital to reinvent herself and live “elsewhere and alone.” The character is a fictional double of the author, a former Queen of Paris Nights based in Brittany (West).
Born to a Russian photographer and a French art collector, Ann Scott grew up in Paris before moving to London at 17. She was a model and a drummer in a punk band. She began writing at the age of 29 and notably wrote the novel Asphyxia and then Superstar.
The essay prize went to Jean-Luc Barré for the first volume of more than 900 pages of an extensive biography: “De Gaulle, une vie: l’homme de Personne (1890-1944)”, published by Grasset.