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Jean-Baptiste Andrea Wins Goncourt Prize With Sprawling Novel
Jean-Baptiste Andrea Wins Goncourt Prize With Sprawling Novel
(about 1 hour later)
Jean-Baptiste Andrea received the Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award, on Tuesday for his novel “Watching Over Her.”
Jean-Baptiste Andrea received the Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award, on Tuesday for his novel “Watching Over Her.”
The novel, published by L’Iconoclaste, is a sprawling fresco that follows Michelangelo “Mimo” Vitaliani, a dwarf and skilled sculptor who at the end of his life is said to be “watching over” his masterpiece, a mysteriously powerful sculpture.
The novel, published by L’Iconoclaste, is a sprawling fresco that follows Michelangelo “Mimo” Vitaliani, a dwarf and skilled sculptor who at the end of his life is said to be “watching over” his masterpiece, a mysteriously powerful sculpture.
Andrea, a former screenwriter, sets the nearly 600-page “Watching Over Her,” or “Veiller Sur Elle” in French, across several tumultuous decades in 20th-century Italy, including the years of fascism’s rise, when a younger Mimo forges an intense bond with the adventurous daughter of an aristocratic family.
Andrea, a former screenwriter, sets the nearly 600-page “Watching Over Her,” or “Veiller Sur Elle” in French, across several tumultuous decades in 20th-century Italy, including the years of fascism’s rise, when a younger Mimo forges an intense bond with the adventurous daughter of an aristocratic family.
The 10 members of the Goncourt Academy, the French literary society that awards the prize, made their announcement at lunchtime at the Paris restaurant Drouant, where the winners have been declared since 1914. Dozens of journalists crammed into the restaurant to hear the winner, who was chosen after 14 rounds of voting.
The 10 members of the Goncourt Academy, the French literary society that awards the prize, made their announcement at lunchtime at the Paris restaurant Drouant, where the winners have been declared since 1914. Dozens of journalists crammed into the restaurant to hear the winner, who was chosen after 14 rounds of voting.
In literary-crazed France, the Goncourt is the most coveted book award, one that can crown a distinguished career or suddenly launch a newer one. Past winners have included Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir and Patrick Modiano, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The winning book came from a shortlist including three others:
“Humus” by Gaspard Koenig, a philosopher who founded a libertarian think-tank, recounts a quest by two student agronomists beset by climate anxiety who end up on radically divergent paths: Kevin, a son of the working class, starts a successful composting company and dives into green capitalism; Arthur, who is from the middle-class bourgeoisie, struggles to save a family estate ruined by pesticides and takes a far more radical road.
“Sarah, Susanne et l’Écrivain” (“Sarah, Susanne and the Writer”), by Éric Reinhardt, a more established author whose 2014 novel was recently adapted into a movie presented at Cannes, tells two interwoven tales of women fighting to free themselves from mediocre, domineering husbands. Sarah is a dissatisfied housewife who temporarily leaves her husband and tells her story to a writer she admires, who, in turn, creates Susanne, a fictional double of Sarah.
“Triste Tigre” (“Sad Tiger”) by Neige Sinno, a little-known French author who lives and teaches in Mexico, is a harrowing account of her rape by her stepfather when she was a child living in the French Alps. It is also a powerful analysis of issues around rape — including the power imbalance between children and adults — that draws on works by Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf and Virginie Despentes.
“Triste Tigre” has won several prizes, including the Prix Femina, a prestigious literary award with a woman-only jury that was created in 1904 as a counterpoint to the Goncourt, which at the time was deemed misogynistic.
The Goncourt comes with a symbolic award of 10 euros (about $10). It also immediately thrusts the winner into the spotlight and tends to lead to a sharp spike in sales in the run-up to Christmas.
Some winners, like “The Anomaly,” a science-fiction thriller about the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight that won in 2019, later land translation deals — although “The Anomaly” has also sold more than a million copies in France, an unusually high figure even for a Goncourt winner.
Last year’s prize went to Brigitte Giraud for “Vivre Vite,” or “Living Fast,” which explores the causes of an accident that killed her partner and the tiny twists of fate that might have prevented it. She was only the 13th woman to be awarded the prize in 120 years.
