The themes of the four works shortlisted for the Goncourt belong to a register dark : infanticide for Leïla Slimani, suicide for Catherine Cusset, cannibalism for Régis Jauffret and genocide for Gaël Faye.
The four finalists for the Goncourt : Régis Jauffret, Leïla Slimani, Catherine Cusset, and Gaël Faye.
© JOEL SAGET / AFP
Leïla Slimani seems to be the favorite…
In the wake of the Goncourt, the jury Renaudot, met at Drouant, will award its prize concluded the season of the big literary prizes this fall. The Renaudot has five finalists : Adelaide de Clermont-Tonnerre who has just won the Grand Prix du roman of the French Academy, Régis Jauffret, Simon Liberati, Yasmina Reza and Leila Slimani. The two prizes have in common two authors, Leïla Slimani and Régis Jauffret, but the jury Goncourt has the priority of choice and there will be no duplicate.
The game of predictions, necessarily hazardous, it is the young novelist franco-moroccan Leïla Slimani, who seemed to be the favorite to succeed Mathias Enard. His novel “sweet Song” (Gallimard), history of atrocious and extremely well-built, tells the story of the murder of two children by their nanny. It is already a bestseller. Second novel only of the writer, born in Morocco, he is 35 years old, he eats like a thriller but can also be read as a book relentless on the relations of domination and social misery.
… But the jury of the Goncourt likes to foil paris
But the ten-member jury chaired by Bernard Pivot like outwit all the bets. Few women appear in the list of winners of the Goncourt. During the past 20 years, the prize has rewarded four winners. If Slimani miss the boat, what are the chances of one and the other?
“The other that we loved” by Catherine Cusset presents itself as a tribute to his friend Thomas Bulot, who committed suicide a day as of April 2008, at 39 years old. The book, which is not a fiction, has divided the critics but to the novelist, 53 years of age, and which in the past has won the Goncourt des lycéens, has behind it a significant work that could convince the jury Goncourt.
Régis Jauffret, who at 61 is the eldest of the band is an outsider and also a works impressive. It has already been the winner of the Fémina. “Cannibals” (Threshold) is a book “to die for”, said Bernard Pivot in one of his literary chronicles to the JDD. Worn by a writing very Eighteenth century, may be his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, “Cannibals”, a collection of correspondence between two women stop talking on the best way to end it with a man who is delightfully amoral.
The last thief is the first-time novelist Gaël Faye, 34 years old, a rising figure in the rap scene French and indisputable revelation of the start of the literary. His book “Small country” (Grasset), about his childhood in Burundi, has already been rewarded by the prix du roman Fnac. Compared to its rivals, its story is the one that sells best. The academy Goncourt dare does it reward a first-time novelist ? Why not even if it is rare ! In 2011, the first-time novelist, Alexis Jenni had thus received the award for “the French art of war” (Gallimard).
“Galligrasseuil”
The only certainty is that “Galligrasseuil” (a portmanteau word to describe the publishing houses, Gallimard, Grasset and Seuil) will win the bet. The four finalists are published in one of these three houses. Gallimard has not won the award since 2011, and Stifle (knee) is absent from the charts since 2005. The Threshold won the Goncourt for the last time in 2014.
Midnight and The Olive tree, which could legitimately hope that the prices this year with, respectively, Laurent Mauvignier (“Continue”) and Jean-Paul Dubois (“The estate”) have seen their foal ruthlessly eliminated from the selections. The Goncourt remains a boon for publishers. In average, an award-winning book runs to more than 345.000 copies.
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