The favorites for the 2023 Goncourt Prize like Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Neige Sinno remain in the race in the second selection published by the jury this Tuesday, October 3, while the Canadian Kevin Lambert was eliminated. Because of the controversy that followed his comments in favor of working with sensitivity readers?
After an initial selection of 16 titles, the Académie Goncourt narrowed its choice to eight titles. The four finalists must be chosen in Warsaw on October 25, then the prize will be awarded on November 7. This second selection confirms the turning point adopted by the jury, which has stopped excluding autobiographical books in recent years. He did so until then, wanting to crown a work of “imaginative prose”, as mentioned in the will of Edmond de Goncourt.
Neige Sinno (“Sad Tiger”) and Laure Murat (“Proust, family novel”) thus sign very personal essays, one after having suffered a long incest, the other after having had to break with her aristocratic environment due to his homosexuality.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint (“L’Échiquier”) is in a similar vein, evoking his passion for chess. The five other novels selected are fiction, such as “Sarah, Susanne and the Writer” by Éric Reinhardt, which recounts the fall of a woman who leaves her husband.
The second selection:
– Jean-Baptiste Andrea, “Watch over her” (The Iconoclast)
– Dominique Barbéris, “A way of loving” (Gallimard)
– Gaspard Koenig, “Humus” (The Observatory)
– Laure Murat, “Proust, family novel” (Robert Laffont)
– Éric Reinhardt, “Sarah, Susanne and the writer” (Gallimard)
– Antoine Sénanque, “Cross of Ash” (Grasset)
– Snow Sinno, “Sad Tiger” (POL)
– Jean-Philippe Toussaint, “L’Échiquier” (Midnight)