The Prix Médicis jury, chaired this year by Anne F. Garréta, narrowed down its choices for the “French novel” and “foreign novel” categories and revealed the fourteen books competing in the “essays” category. The winners will be revealed on November 9, from the La Méditerranée restaurant in Paris. Here are the selections revealed by Livres Hebdo magazine.
In novels, we obviously note the three authors present on the Goncourt list: Dominique Barbéris, Éric Reinhardt and Neige Sinno. And the discovery that made headlines: Kevin Lambert, with Let our joy remain. Richard Morgiève, winner of the Georges-Brassens Literary Prize, continues his journey.
On the publisher side, Gallimard presents two contenders, the same ones who are targeting Goncourt. Grasset and Seuil each have an author in the running. Two “small” houses slip among the big ones: Le Nouvel Attila and Zoé, a Swiss publishing house which thus illustrates the vigor of French-speaking letters.
The 8 French-speaking novels:
Dominique Barbéris, A way of loving (Gallimard)
Salma El Moumni, Adieu Tanger (Grasset)
Kevin Lambert, May our joy remain (The New Attila)
Lisette Lombé, Eunice (Seuil)
Richard Morgiève, Mother’s Day (Joëlle Losfeld)
Éric Reinhardt, Sarah, Susanne and the writer (Gallimard)
Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger (P.O.L.)
Elisa Shua Dusapin, The Old Fire (Zoé)
The 9 novels of foreign literature:
Nina Allan, Conquest, translated from English (UK) by Bernard Sigaud (Tristram)
Hila Blum, How to love your daughter, translated from Hebrew by Valérie Zenatti (Robert Laffont)
David Grann, Les Naufragés du Wager, translated from English (United States) by Johan-Frédérik Hel Guedj (Éditions du sous-sol)
Lidia Jorge, Misericordia, translated from Portuguese by Elisabeth Monteiro Rodrigues (Matched)
Han Kang, Impossible Farewells, translated from Korean (South Korea) by Kyungran Choi and Pierre Bisiou (Grasset)
László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim is back, translated from Hungarian by Joëlle Dufeuilly (Cambourakis)
Kim de L’Horizon, Purple Beech, translated from German (Switzerland) by Rose Labourie (Julliard)
Robert Seethaler, The Nameless Café, translated from German (Austria) by Elisabeth Landes and Herbert Wolf (Sabine Wespieser)
Chris de Stoop, The Book of Daniel, translated from Dutch (Belgium) by Anne-Laure Vignaux (Globe)
The 14 trials:
Daniel Andler, Artificial intelligence, human intelligence. The double enigma (Gallimard)
Nathacha Appanah, The Washed Memory (Mercure de France)
Robert Bober, There are still people passing by in the street (P.O.L.)
Benoît Chantre, René Girard. Biography (Grasset)
Ariane Chemin, Don’t wake up the children (Éditions du sous-sol)
Marie Favereau, The Horde. How the Mongols changed the world (Perrin)
Hélène Frappat, Gaslighting or the Art of Silencing Women (L’Observatoire)
Anouche Kunth, On the verge of erasure. In the footsteps of Armenian exiles in the interwar period (La Découverte)
Valérie Mréjen, The Young Artist (P.O.L.)
Laure Murat, Proust, family novel (Robert Laffont)
Nathalie Piégay, 3 Nanas. Saint Phalle, Bourgeois, Messenger (Threshold)
Judith Schalansky, Inventory of Lost Things, translated from German by Lucy Lamy (Ypsilon)
Camille de Toledo, A history of vertigo (Verdier)
The jury, chaired this year by Anne F. Garréta, is composed of Marianne Alphant, Michel Braudeau, Marie Darrieussecq, Dominique Fernandez, Patrick Grainville, Frédéric Mitterrand, Andreï Makine, Pascale Roze and Alain Veinstein.
Last year, Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam was crowned for her novel La Treizième Heure (P.O.L). The Medici foreign novel prize was awarded to Andreï Kourkov for Les Abeilles grises, translated from Russian (Ukraine) by Paul Lequesne (Liana Levi) and the Medici essay prize went to Georges Didi-Huberman for Le Témoin until end (Midnight).
