The Goncourt 2022 award goes to Brigitte Giraud for the novel “Vivre vite” and Renaudot to Simon Liberati for “Performance”.
She is the thirteenth woman to win this award. Brigitte Giraud, 62, won the 2022 Prix Goncourt live fast (Flammarion), Thursday, November 3. Her intimate novel traces the chain of events that led to the death of her husband in a motorcycle accident in 1999. “Maybe words help to overcome fate”, he reacted after the announcement of the most prestigious French-language literary prizes. “Intimacy only makes sense when it resonates with the collective. (…) I want to think that (the judges) saw this dimension as wider than simple intimate life, just fate.”
Brigitte Giraud won the Goncourt thanks to the vote of president Didier Decoin, who counted double in the 14th round of a very tight vote against Giuliano da Empoli, thus succeeding the Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. The Academie Goncourt chose the author, who was little known to the general public and not used to big sales figures, and thus achieved a certain revival. A French woman is the first author to receive the Goncourt since then Soft song By Leïla Slimani in 2016. “I receive this award not as a woman, but as a person who has been working in literature for years.” he noted.
During the awarding ceremony, the president of the Academy, Didier Decoin, said that even if this work was written by a man, he would vote for it.
He chose it over fellow finalist Giuliano da Empoli and his book Mage du Kremlin (Gallimard publications). “great” But “more immediate, in direct contact with current events, less romantic”. Brigitte Giraud “He poses the question of fate with great simplicity and authenticity,” Added Didier Decoin, sitting at Drouant, a Parisian restaurant where the judges traditionally think. Brigitte Giraudit started with the brutal grief he felt, which was painful. It’s in his book something tragic he noted again.
Brigitte Giraud, a Lyonnaise from Algeria, has written dozens of books, novels, essays or short stories. He received the 2007 Goncourt prize for short stories for the collection Love is much appreciated. In 2019, he was a finalist for the Prix Médicis Brave day.
Writer Brigitte Giraud wrote as a tribute to her husband, who died in an accident more than two decades ago. live fast. On June 22, 1999, in Lyon, her husband Claude sped off at a traffic light on an extremely powerful motorcycle that was not his own and crashed. He will not recover.
In 2001, he recounted the weeks following this death Now. He calls her “Wonder book, explosion, crash right after”. At the time of the drama, he was 36 years old, had a very young son, a house they had just bought, moved without him.. “I’ve known for a long time that I had to write a book. A book that fits Cloe, a book about our love story, covering all of that and looking for the truth, all the truths.” he says. But “I couldn’t have written it 20 years ago because I must have been well away.” When it came time to sell the house in Caloir-et-Coir, near Lyon, the writing came. And with that, the desire to shed light on certain cases that have remained unclear for many years.
By choosing live fast, the Goncourt judges choose a sober and sensitive story that was immediately well received by critics. As in an accident, the impossible is the result of a chain of events. “There was also a domino effect.” But “A lot of wonderful things happened there.” “After all, I think this is a love book,” he said on Thursday at the Drouant restaurant in Paris when he received the most prestigious French-language literary prize.
Three other authors were finalists The oldest French literary prize, awarded since 1903 “best imaginative work in prose published in the year” and written by a French-speaking author.
Longtime favorite Giuliano da Empoli, 49, released in April Wizard of the Kremlin (Gallimard) will finally have to settle for the Grand Prix du Roman of the French Academy, which he won at the end of October.
Again in the finale, flourishing Haitian literature once again sees Goncourt, Mackenzie Orcel (Human amount in Rivages) cannot establish itself. None other than Chloe Corman, the author and pen of speeches that rival the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye. Almost sistersPublished by Seuil.
The Renaudot prize was also awarded to Simon Liberati on Thursday Performance (Grasset), about a septualist writer who reconnects with the sacred fire by writing a script for the Rolling Stones and has an affair with a woman about 50 years his junior. He received 6 votes among the members of the jury. “Everything in this register, I wouldn’t teach you dear, that’s enough, how can I say, it’s rarely planned,” The 62-year-old writer reacted to the press. Claudie Hunzinger was also shortlisted for her novel A dog on my desk.
Born in Paris in May 1960, Simon Liberati has worked notably with FHM and Grazia magazines after studying at the Sorbonne. He published his first book at the age of 44. Anthology of visions (Flammarion), considered by many to be a cult novel about adolescence.
The third novel, Hyper Justine, won the Flore Award in 2009. It tells the story of a small-time con artist who fascinates a young Englishwoman involved in a film project inspired by Sade. In 2011, he won Femina Jayne Mansfield 1967, about an actress and a peroxided pin-up with a tragic fate. Four years later, Simon Liberati dedicates his book to his former friend, the novelist Eva Ionesco, who was a regular at the Palace in the early 80s.
Guillaume Durand goes for the Renaudot test Let’s have dinner on the grass (Books) and pocket Renaudot for Delphine Horvilleur Living with our dead.
At the end of the year, literary prizes are an important economic issue, which often inspires French people who want to discover or propose a novel. Le Goncourt in particular guarantees sales in the hundreds of thousands.
As tradition dictates, Brigitte Giraud also leaves with a ten-euro check, which beneficiaries generally prefer to frame rather than deposit in a bank.
