The Frenchwoman Brigitte Giraud, 60, won the Goncourt 2022 prize on Thursday November 3 for her novel Vivre vite, published by Flammarion editions. She recounts there, in a sober and sensitive story, the death of her husband in a motorcycle accident in 1999. The ten members of the Académie Goncourt, gathered at the restaurant Drouant, in Paris, crowned him in the 14th ballot. , ahead of Giuliano da Empoli – who received the Academy Award last week -, Cloé Korman and Makenzy Orcel, the other finalists. “She is the thirteenth woman to win the prize,” said Paule Constant, writer and member of the Academy, and the first author since Leïla Slimani, awarded in 2016 for Sweet Song.
Brigitte Giraud succeeds the Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. The Académie Goncourt has chosen an author little known to the general public and not accustomed to large sales figures, thus pursuing a certain revival. Lyonnaise, native of Algeria, Brigitte Giraud has written a dozen books, novels, essays or short stories. She obtained the Goncourt for short story 2007 for the collection Love is very overestimated. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Prix Médicis for Jour de courage.
Awarded immediately after, the Renaudot prize went to Simon Liberati for Performance (Grasset), the story of a septuagenarian writer who reconnects with the sacred fire by writing a screenplay on the Rolling Stones, and has a relationship with a woman from almost 50 years younger than him. The journalist and writer obtained 6 votes among the members of the jury.
