(Rennes) The Ouest-France Étonnants Voyageurs prize was awarded on Sunday in Saint-Malo in France to Audrée Wilhelmy for White Resin (Grasset), a love story between two singular beings, in a timeless and phantasmagoric universe, on the edge of the tale, announced the organizers.
Posted at 9:58 a.m.
A Quebec author born in Cap-Rouge in 1985, Audrée Wilhelmy “quickly stood out for her organic writing and her taste for the question of taboos”. “My universe is not subject to our laws or those of a particular era,” she told reporters in 2018.
In White Resinthe novelist offers “the spellbinding tale of a singular love story, between two marginal beings: a wild child, Daã, and an albino, Laure, in the heart of the taiga”.
The Ouest-France/Étonnants Voyageurs prize, endowed with an endowment of 2000 euros (2700 CAD), is awarded each year by a jury of ten young readers aged 15 to 20 selected on the basis of a cover letter, after an initial selection of an adult jury.
The “Seafarers” prize, awarded to the author of a recent book with a maritime character, was awarded to the Irishman Paul Lynch for Beyond the sea (Albin Michel).
The Nicolas Bouvier prize, in tribute to the deceased travel writer, who accompanied the Etonnants Voyageurs festival in its early years, goes to Spanish journalist Emilio Sanchez Mediavilla for A dacha in the Gulf (Métailié), in which the author recounts his two years spent in Bahrain.
The Joseph Kessel Prize was awarded Wednesday to Patrick Deville for Fenua (Editions du Seuil).
One hundred and fifty authors are taking part in this 32e edition of the festival, on the theme of “re-enchanting the world”. This is the first edition organized in public since the death of its founder, the writer Michel Le Bris, in January 2021. His daughter Mélani Le Bris is now co-directing the festival.
Created in 1990, the Étonnants Voyageurs literature and film festival has had several international versions, including Haifa (Israel) in 2008 and Brazzaville (Congo) in 2013. During previous editions in Saint-Malo, the event had welcomed up to to 60,000 visitors, according to the organisers.