French novelist Neige Sinno won the Femina prize for French novels on Monday for sad tiger (POL editions), story of the incest of which she was a victim as a child and essay on sexual violence. The one who started as favorite for this prize received nine votes out of 12 in the first round from the exclusively female jury.
“The subject that my book deals with is not a subject for women, nor for men, nor for any other,” she declared after the announcement of the prize at the Carnavalet museum in Paris. “It reminds me of my thesis defense, where there were also only women among the professors. […] It’s a source of pride, in addition, to be encouraged,” she added.
Mme Sinno, 46, is also a finalist for the Goncourt, which is due to be awarded this Tuesday. However, it would be surprising if she received two major French autumn literary prizes in as many days, which a priori leaves three possible winners: Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Gaspard Koenig and Eric Reinhardt.
A Doctor of Letters at the age of 28, she chose emigration for her career, far from the Hautes-Alpes where she grew up: she now teaches in a branch of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Morelia, in Michoacán . Before sad tigershe had gone almost unnoticed in literature, with a collection of short stories in 2007 (The life of rats) and a novel in 2018 (The truck), published by small publishers.
His third book was unanimously praised among literary critics. However, it had been rejected by several competitors from POL editions, before she sent it to this house which rushed to offer her a contract.
The Femina Prize for Foreign Novels was awarded to the American Louise Erdrich, 69, for Sentence (Albin Michel), story of an indigenous bookseller confronted with the ghosts of the past and the racism of the present. Present at the award ceremony, the author recalled that, like the heroine of the novel, she ran a bookstore in Minneapolis, in the north of the United States, devoted to the literature of North American First Nations. “It’s also a haunted place,” she pointed out. The American novelist obtained seven votes out of 12 in the first round.
Finally, the jury awarded its essay prize, by nine votes in the first round, to French researcher Hugo Micheron, 35, a specialist in jihadism, for Anger and forgetting (Gallimard). The essay examines radical and violent Islamist movements in Europe following the collapse of the Islamic State organization in Syria. The author said he was happy with the achievement of “three years of work”. “For me, a book is feminine. And receiving this prize is the greatest reward for me,” he said.