The jury of the Femina Prize, which opens the literary prize season in France, presented the French novel prize to Clara Dupont-Monod on Monday for Adapt, and the foreign novel award to Turk Ahmet Altan for a novel written in prison.
Meeting at the Carnavalet museum in Paris, the jury, which has the specificity of being exclusively female, chose this winner in the eighth round, with six votes, against five for Thomas B. Reverdy for Climax (Flammarion).
48-year-old editor and journalist, Clara Dupont-Monod recounts in Adapt (Stock editions) the arrival of a disabled child in siblings.
This prize, “I would like to dedicate it to all the different beings, who are nevertheless 12 million in France, and to all their siblings, all those who take care of them”, she commented to the press.
The author, warned by her editor, said she was surprised by the news. “It’s very moving: it goes beyond the book, what this award crowns, and that’s what touches me,” she explained.
The Femina is the first of the major autumn literary prizes awarded in France, before the Medici on Tuesday, the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française on Thursday, and the Goncourt and Renaudot prizes on November 3.
Travel ban
The Femina Prize for Foreign Novel went to Ahmet Altan for Madame Hayat (Actes Sud), novel written in prison which has not yet appeared in its original language.
The young narrator falls in love with this older lady, of whom he writes that “she was not beautiful strictly speaking, but she had something more attractive than beauty, a sparkle of vitality”.
Released from prison in April after his conviction for participating in the failed 2016 coup, which he firmly denies, the 71-year-old writer and journalist cannot leave his country.
“Unfortunately, I will not be able to be with you today […] I am forbidden to travel outside Turkey, ”he said in a thank you video to the jury.
In a letter read to the press by his French editor, Timour Muhidine, the author dedicated this Femina prize “to all Turkish and Kurdish women unjustly imprisoned”.
The administration and its excesses
Finally, the prize for the essay was awarded to Annie Cohen-Solal for A stranger named Picasso (Fayard), which tells how the Spanish master never acquired French nationality.
The historian, interviewed by AFP, said she was delighted. “It turns out that Picasso is 140 years old today! He is a man who never complained about what happened to him, even though for decades he experienced something that all foreigners experience: he went to the police station every two years to get his fingerprints. He never said a word about it, ”recalled the winner.
When he applied for nationality in 1940, “it was an obscure ticket office official, a little fellow with exorbitant power, a real Pétainiste, who buried his file. I discovered his name, and I was able to understand how even a great genius is not immune to administration, ”she added.