Emmanuelle Pierrot in Monaco | The Press

(Monaco) I learned on Tuesday from Emmanuelle Pierrot that she was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for her novel The version that interests no one while we were both in Monaco. Even abroad, I don’t miss the literary news from Quebec. It had just come out, she didn’t know about it.

But now you are wondering what we were doing in Monaco? Pierrot was in the running for the Discovery Grant from the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation, which was won last year by Éric Chacour and his novel What I know about youwhich has since become a huge success. For my part, as the Foundation invites a foreign journalist every year, to my great surprise it fell on me for 2024.

My only panic was to find at the last minute a costume that could respect a certain decorum during a ceremony taking place at the Monte-Carlo opera in the presence of Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Hanover (Caroline of Monaco) – thanks to Audrey Simard, from Les Relookeuses, for having found in record time a perfect jacket that I will probably wear out, like my colleague Marc Cassivi wears out his suit on the Cannes red carpets.

Something sober, all-purpose, which allows you to go unnoticed in a crowd where everyone is well dressed. I understood that I was really going to go unnoticed when I arranged to meet Pierrot at the restaurant of the hotel where we were staying. She arrived looking like herself, big leather boots, checkered pants, short t-shirt over a pierced navel, a chain around her neck and a ring in her nose. It suits him perfectly – everything suits young people – but it stands out quite a bit in the Principality of Monaco, a tiny city-state populated by the rich where I have seen absolutely no one dressed like that.

“Pierrot in Monaco, it’s funny, it’s a big contrast all the same,” she said straight away, giving me my column title.

She always preferred to be called only Pierrot, and agreed to add Emmanuelle on the cover of her book published in Quartanier because it was her first, and it was simpler that way. But the enormous reception of this novel, released in the fall of 2023 and which has shocked every person who has read it, joyfully complicates his life. She is invited all over Europe these days, and the experience is very intense for someone who quickly wears out too much social life. “I am not like those bottomless wells of light that are Éric Chacour and Patrick Senécal, capable of giving everything to their readership,” she says, without any irony. She really likes these two writers who took her under their wing in various salons and events.

Winner of the Literary Prize for college students in Quebec, The version that interests no one is the chilling story of Sacha, a young girl who believes she has found a sort of paradise in a marginal community in the Yukon, but who becomes the scapegoat for this entire community when her best friend takes a dislike to her, in the middle of a pandemic lockdown.

I finished this novel having difficulty breathing, feeling claustrophobic, and it reminded me a little of the movie Dogville by Lars von Trier. This allusion pleases Pierrot, because it is one of his favorite films. Rather than setting the city on fire like in Dogvilleher heroine is going to write, she explains. “The equivalent for Sacha is to speak. She says to herself: “You didn’t know this, but all this time I was a writer. Everything you did was documented.” This is how she burns her village: by telling. »

And here she is today in Monaco.

But just before, Pierrot recharged her batteries for a few days in the countryside in a squat within a collective called “Rage against the Washing Machine”, and I laughed when she told me about having to wash her clothes in a sink passing through Nice before arriving. “I felt so good, I didn’t want to leave,” she confides.

She also informs me that she was evicted from her home in Montreal and is living in a friend’s living room. This is why she refused an invitation from François Legault’s Quebec delegation to Paris, because she is very angry with him for Bill 31 which prevents lease transfers. “All my friends are losing their homes. » Without forgetting the terrible accident that she recently experienced, as she recounted in an article in Urbania, and from which she is still suffering after-effects.

Read “The article I failed to write”

But Monday and Tuesday, his schedule was filled with official activities organized by the Foundation. Dinners, meetings with readers, the famous awards ceremony and the chic reception that followed. The sole of one of his boots was broken, and it was the writer Mokhtar Amoudi, also in the running for the Discovery Grant, who found a hardware store in Monaco to repair it. “He’s so nice, everyone loves him, I’m sure he’s the one who will win,” Pierrot told me about his competitor. She was right: it was Mokhtar Amoudi who finally won the grant for his novel The ideal conditionsand I heard between the branches that the vote was close.

But Pierrot did not waste his time in Monaco. She knew how to move the members of the literary council who also belong to the French Academy and the Goncourt Academy, and, more than anything, she managed to seduce the princess herself, who chairs the council and who adored her novel – she came to express her admiration for him during the reception at the Hermitage Hotel, twice rather than once, and the second time, I was there to witness it.

The Quebec presence in Monaco

I don’t think I would have accepted this invitation if I hadn’t felt there was a story to tell for readers here. The Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation, created in 1966 by Prince Rainier III in tribute to his father, awards literary prizes every year and, every three years, musical and artistic prizes. The Literary Prizes are divided into three stages: the Literary Prize which rewards an entire career (with a grant of 25,000 euros), the Discovery Grant for first novels (12,000 euros) and the Coup of hearts of high school students (6000 euros).

These awards often kick off the awards season in Europe and are strangely little known, particularly in Quebec. However, they celebrated local writers, such as Anne Hébert, Michel Tremblay and Marie-Claire Blais for their entire careers – Victor-Lévy Beaulieu was on the verge of having it, but would not have wanted to take the plane – and recently Éric Chacour for the Discovery Exchange.

Moreover, Marie-Claire Blais was a long time member of the literary council and when I see Pierrot’s look, I think of the eternal leather jacket that Blais wore. When she died, Dominique Fortier was asked to succeed her, and she accepted, thus joining another famous compatriot on the board: Dany Laferrière.

Fortier and Laferrière together, these are voices that weigh a little in the balance during the deliberations. “Our goal is to contaminate them,” Dany told me with a laugh during an official lunch where he was seated next to the princess, with whom he clearly has affinities.

This great dandy, immortal of the French Academy, has his entries everywhere, and everyone is eager for him. I chatted a lot with Dany and Dominique during these two days where I was able to see that despite a certain protocol in superb places like the Hermitage hotel or the Garnier room of the Monte-Carlo opera, everything goes smoothly. rather friendly and good-natured manner. Through this, I found Pierrot truly moving, sincere and true among so many great names in literature combined. She was constantly approached by people who wanted to congratulate and encourage her.

The most interesting thing is that the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation has the firm intention of focusing on the French-speaking world in literature, of moving away from the overly French side of the prizes, explains its press officer, Frédéric Cauderlier, adding that the writers Quebecois have really been popular for several years. This was confirmed to me by Princess Caroline of Monaco herself, with whom I chatted for a few minutes, after being introduced to her by Dany Laferrière (I still can’t believe it).

The princess, who chairs the literary council and participates in the deliberations, is very involved and reads all the books in the running. “She’s a great reader,” Éric Chacour told me, who wanted to encourage Pierrot by writing to me on Instagram. During the ceremony, Caroline of Monaco underlined with emotion that all the novels of the Discovery Exchange were particularly remarkable this year and her personal greeting to Pierrot when leaving the reception after the ceremony seemed to say that the adventure was not finished.

“It’s a great victory for Sacha who was stuck in her cabin,” Pierrot told me the day before, about his nomination. Even without having received the scholarship, this is entirely true.

Transport and accommodation costs for this report were paid by the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation, which had no right to review its content.