The winner of 2016 to modernize the portrait type of the winning authors since 1903.
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Leïla Slimani has been awarded, Thursday, November 3, by the Goncourt prize for his novel sweet Song (Gallimard). The Franco-Moroccan 35 years of age thus becomes the twelfth woman to receive this prestigious literary prize, awarded one hundred and two times to the men since its creation in 1903. What is dusting off the image of machismo that fits the more masculine of the literary awards, major.
Read also : How many women among the literary prizes in French ?
younger than the average, which amounted to 41.8 years
at the age of 35, Leïla Slimani stands out also by its relative youth, while the Goncourt award of the perpetrators of increasingly older. It must thus go back to 2004 to find a winner younger than she, Laurent Gaudé, which received its award at the age of 32, for The Soleil des Scorta (Acts South). Yet, in its early editions, the Goncourt rewarded happy authors under 30 years of age. The average age for winning is now 41.8 years.
Among the 22 % of authors born abroad
The author of sweet Song is also part of the minority of recipients who are not born on the French territory, since she was born and grew up in Rabat, Morocco, before coming to study and work in Paris. This is the second winner of the Goncourt born in Morocco after Tahar Ben Jelloun in 1987.
In total, twenty-five prix Goncourt (22 %) are foreign born, or in what was at the time the French colonial empire (Algeria, Morocco, Indo-china, now Vietnam). We note that women are over-represented among these profiles : they are at 58.3 % not to be born in France, compared to 17.6 % of men winners.
By examining the country of origin, one finds without surprise the French-speaking countries, such as Belgium or Switzerland, but also three winners born in Russia, and now Lithuania (Romain Gary, that was twice the price), as well as two Franco-Americans : the first recipient, John-Antoine Nau, in 1903, and Jonathan Littell, 2006.
Published by Gallimard… as a third of the winners
If the profile of Leïla Slimani brings a bit of freshness in the Goncourt, it is in the row on a table : his publishing house. Gallimard is the publisher of the most rewarded by this literary prize, with thirty-seven award-winning films in one hundred and fourteen years (32,4 %).
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