Brigitte Giraud, winner of the Prix Goncourt 2022, shares her joy

From the end of the rue Gaillon in Paris, we can already see in the middle of the day the satellite dishes ready to broadcast the most awaited news by the world of books in France. Journalists and cameras are stationed in front of the Drouant restaurant, where the Prix Goncourt is announced each year. Several places are strategic here to capture the key moments of this annual event, and you would have to cut yourself into three to miss nothing.

First spot: the outside, where you can grab the right shot of the winner, if you are flexible and clever enough to slip into the right place in the forest of microphones, lenses and cameras that attack the champion or the champion upon her arrival.

Second spot: the staircase in which a member of Goncourt announces the winner. The cameras are installed there from early morning to find the best place. At the foot of the staircase lined with mirrors that allow you to monitor the arrival of the oracle, the old veterans of Goncourt rub shoulders, who give their advice, and the newcomers, a bit worried.

“Is it here or at the window that they announce the news?”asks a young journalist who is a little pale. “Here, don’t worry” replies a regular. “And then you have to draw quickly outside to nab the winner when he arrives” he adds learnedly, right at the moment when the well-known quivering of the regulars is felt. “That’s it, they’re going down. Let’s go”we hear in the ranks.

“Le Goncourt is attributed to Brigitte Giraud for her novel live fast in the 14th ballot by five votes against five to Giuliano da Empoli’s novel, The Kremlin Magethe president’s vote counting double” announces Paule Constant, member of the Académie Goncourt, adding “she is the 13th writer to win the Goncourt”. Winner by five votes to five, in the 14th round? Weird but we don’t have time to try to understand. We’ll see that later.

Quick applause. You have to rush to the third strategic location, and there, it gets tougher, you have to show your credentials: “Do you have an accreditation?” Up there, the curious are not welcome. “We still can’t let everyone pass” blows a somewhat overwhelmed communication officer, but who manages each other’s ballet with kindness.

Once past the obstacle, we climb a flight of stairs to arrive in the lair of Goncourt, the famous oval room where the members of the Academy meet to designate the winner. There, again, you have to be flexible, tuck your belly in and slalom between the microphones and the trays of petit fours in the cramped space surrounding the huge jury table, to reach the other side of the room, the best place to interview the laureate when she arrives.

In the meantime, we take this opportunity to slip a question to the president of the Académie Goncourt, Didier Decoin, on the choice of this year, this novel by Brigitte Giraud which goes back with an infinity of “if” the sequence of events which led to the motorcycle accident that claimed the life of his companion twenty years ago. “It is a book of great depth, which questions destiny”he begins.

“A book about a tragedy that asks the question of why and that studies all the cogs of the fatal chronology that led to the accident”he continues before slipping us some confidences “It’s a question that I often ask myself, especially about my meeting with my wife. Because this question of fate, we can also ask ourselves about happy questions. I met my wife on the occasion of a signing, and I’ve often wondered what my life would have been like if my wife hadn’t read my book, hadn’t decided to come to that signing, so I might never have met, my three children would not have been born, etc…”

The president of the Academy explains that he defended the idea of ​​not making a duplicate with the book by Giuliano da Empoli, which has already obtained the Grand Prize for the Novel of the French Academy for The Mage of the Kremlin. “He has nothing to be ashamed of. The Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française is a very good prize, and in addition his book is already selling very well. And I am thinking of booksellers. It is better to have two books that sell rather than just one”explains Didier Decoin.

Another member of the Academy, Philippe Claudel, is delighted with this choice. “It’s a book that I’ve championed from the start, so I’m delighted. This year we had some really good books and that led to more heated discussions than usual”underlines the writer.

“It’s a deceptively simple book, which speaks of a tragedy, but it’s a book of life, a gentle book, which can speak to each of us. A book which can help, soothe when we are in the penalty”he believes. “And then we find the sensitivity that is there in all of Brigitte Giraud’s work, and icing on the cake, I am very happy that the prize is awarded this year to a woman, the 13th winner in 120 years… is the year of women. After Annie Ernaux’s Nobel, Brigitte Giraud’s Goncourt”he welcomes.

The arrival of Brigitte Giraud, Prix Goncourt 2022, in the Salon Goncourt!@Drouant2⁩ ⁦@Ed_Flammarion pic.twitter.com/BQmQkifRjK

– Goncourt Academy (@AcadGoncourt) November 3, 2022

New thrill, the winner has appeared. Applause. She seems to be floating on a small cloud. “This way Brigitte, a little smile this way please” harangue the photographers. Dazzled by the flashes, with a broad smile, the laureate bends kindly to the ritual posing session, before expressing her joy.

“It’s magnificent, it’s unexpected, it’s moving”she lets go. “I was in an office at my publisher with everyone who worked on this book when I heard the news. I screamed with joy. We screamed with joy. happiness is to shout together”adds the novelist, moved.

“I’m thinking of my editor, of my publishers, of Claude (his missing companion), of course, and I’m also thinking of literature, of the words that perhaps have the power to ward off death in the end. It’s a book of love.” she breathes. “It’s a book that talks about an intimate story, but I think that the intimate only has meaning if it is connected to the collective” continues the novelist. “It’s a book that questions a society, liberalism, an era, the end of the 20th century, just before the big leap into digital. It’s a photograph of that bygone era”adds the novelist, who confides that she hopes to have seduced the members of the Academy with “that dimension of the book”.

“There are two important words”continues Brigitte Giraud, “both of Arabic origin “mektoub, which means fate, and chance which means accident, something that falls”emphasizes Brigitte Giraud. “When I started to observe all the unusual events that had happened in the months, weeks, days leading up to the accident, these slight malfunctions, then I decided to look for the piece of the puzzle to be removed so that “she doesn’t fit in with the others and the accident doesn’t take place. But obviously it was an illusion. On the other hand, in writing this book, what I found was the collective, all those people who accompanied mesays the novelist. “The book could have been 3000 pages, but at some point I had to stop”she concludes, a smile definitely hanging in her ears, and in her eyes.