The jury met in the warm salon of the Hôtel de Montgascon in Paris, home of Françoise Sagan, before convening at the Hotel Raphael, supported by Panerai, to celebrate the award’s 20th anniversary.
Madame Figaro
French novel. Making a wifeBy Marie Dariesek
The author: From Truismes, his first book in 1996, which was a worldwide success; she was 27, Marie Dariesek multiplied her literary experience. His subject is our language, French, which he uses without nostalgia and which he humorously questions. The author invents a new way of writing so that nothing escapes him from what we are.
History: Return to the fictional village of Cleves, where we find Solange, about whose sex education he already told. Solange became pregnant at the age of 15, gave birth to a child who trusted her mother, and became an actress. Her friend Rose marries her childhood sweetheart and becomes a psychologist.
We liked it a lot. In Making a wifeIt is friendship, sex, fame, work, marriage, love, motherhood that make up the reality of our lives, which she illuminates with the vitality of her speech, the irony of her sentences, the parentheses, the question marks. So she’s clearly our 2024 heroine. CS:
Press department
Biography/History. columnBy Beata Umubiyi Mayress
Céline Nieszawer/Flammarion
The author: Born in Rwanda in 1979 to a Polish father and a Tutsi mother, Beata Umubye Mayrese has first published short stories, the novels All Your Children Are Scattered (Prix des Cinq continents 2020) and Consolée, as well as two poetry collections From Progress after” and Reversing Misfortune before moving on to the story column.
History: On June 18, 1994, shortly before the end of the genocide, he was able to escape from Rwanda with his mother thanks to the convoy of the Swiss organization Terre des hommes. Thirty years later, he recounts the path that led him to this book, the investigation with journalists, philanthropists and survivors to find the “lost image” – the photo of him and his mother in this convoy that saved them, the hidden days. hotel rooms, a reign of barbarism in indifference, a life that hung by a thread on many occasions. He affirms the need to “de-Westernize” the memory of survivors, who are too often reduced to silhouettes in the narrative that is made up of their own history, in order to better assimilate, nurture and transmit it.
We liked it a lot. Drawing from both Imre Kertész and Charlotte Delbo, he offers a reflection on the archive and traces, questioning the role of witnesses and a work of heartbreaking simplicity and sobriety on the theme of “survival from survival”. MTH:
Press service
Comics/Graphic Novel Saying bad things. By Bea Lema
Photo by Vanessa Rabade
The author: Beatrice Lema was born in 1985 in Spain, illustrated in 2013. Winner of the Banda Deseñada Castelao Award in 2017, he received a residence allowance in France. To say bad things. awarded Fauve d’Agoulême, France Télévisions Audience Award 2024
History: With her paranoid mother mentally ill (convinced she is haunted by a demon) and her father overwhelmed by events, to banish her childhood and adolescence, she weaves and combines clinical reports into her magnificent graphic novel, doctors’ prescriptions, vividly colored pictures that recall her childhood. daughter, and a wonderful embroidery that creates a bond between her and her mother,
sewing was one of the rare activities that relaxed her. In the same gesture, she expresses the fear and desire to save, the evil and suffering of a woman in constant delirium, the incomprehensibility, even the abandonment of loved ones, but also the girl’s love for her mother, who never runs away. dry, and the exit from the long tunnel with the hope of a stable life and a reunited family.
We liked it a lot. The mix of genres, the play with the imagination of fairy tales, where the mother becomes a witch, magical madness, demon fairy and this way of turning indescribable pain into art, beauty and unique originality. MTH:
Press service
Foreign novel. The ones we killBy Patricia Mello
Kyrgyz Balmelli
Author:. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Patricia Melo wrote scripts for Brazilian television and theater before turning to novels with a very realistic tone, such as: O Matador! Or hell.
History: A young lawyer with a dark past leaves São Paulo for Acre, Brazil, a region where femicide is rampant, to follow the trial of the killers of a young indigenous woman. In the middle of the Amazon rainforest, he must face violence against women and nature. His encounter with the world of shamans and ancestral rituals, especially the ingestion of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogen, will also allow him to discover the secrets of his family. He then embarks on a quest for justice and discovers women willing to stand up to men’s brutality. A novel full of anger, rebellion and sorority.
We liked it a lot. The journalistic undertones of this insanely energetic feminist investigation intersect legends and myths with the power of shamans and the legends and mythologies of nature-sensitive Brazil, all tinged with poetry, magic and musicality. BB:
Press department
Source: Le Figaro
