Literary prizes are coveted, they are often doped up. The Prix Goncourt, the prize money in the amount of 10 Euro for a dinner. For the freshly anointed winners, he is still a great honor.
The Prix Goncourt this year, Nicolas Mathieu. Will be awarded the 40-Year-old for his second novel “Les enfants après eux” (According to them, the children ). The story takes place in the mid-1990s, in a remote part of the Loire valley in France. The life in the province of bored young people of the novel is the hero. It is a lot of drinking and made derogatory comments about foreigners talking about. The National Front already exists, but of the working class, he has not yet taken complete possession.
Mathieu, accompanied in his novel the four protagonists in their boring everyday life, four years in a row. The 14-Year-old boys dream of and talk about to be able to finally get out of the boring small-town run.
Previous award winners: Yannick Haenel, Veronique Olmi, Eric Vuillard and Alice Zeniter
Desertification in the province of
The author, Born in 1978, knows of what he writes. He himself came from one of those suspended places: the small town of Épinal in the Vosges mountains. Rural regions that are decoupled from the globalisation and a well-functioning Internet world. “I wanted to tell the world that I come from,” says Nicolas Mathieu. “This is a literary but also a political challenge.”
In “Les enfants après eux” he captures very well the allotment garden and DIY – mentality that is widespread in the province. Not only in France but also in Germany and other European countries.
His adolescent protagonists are faced with a future without perspective. “You have no Chance, so seize them.” The saying from the 1970s seems to have re timeliness. The ten members of the Jury highlighted, as it is naturalistic, Nicolas Mathieu over young people’s writing.
Double Award Ceremony
At the same time was awarded in Paris, the Prix Renaudot. After the winner of the Prix Goncourt was solemnly promulgated, entered a member of the jury of the other price to the microphone, the previously in the room next door was advised: The second literary award, the 33-Year-old writer Valérie Manteau for her novel “Le sillon” (The furrow).
French literary prizes seem to be awarded with lush food. At least a legendary food in front of the price announcement, to the literary world waits every year at the prestigious Prix Goncourt, always on the first floor of the chic Restaurants in Paris “Drouot”.
There “suggests the literary heart of France,” as the French Newspapers and agencies write the day of the announcement – full of culture, patriotism, of course. Although there are only ten euros in prize money, but glory and honor may be more valuable than any prize money. The global Public to give the new award winners a Reputation in the literary world, which can pay off in new contract commitments and other prices.
hm/so (dpa/AFP/lemonde.fr)