The French Academy has opened itself as rarely to the French-speaking world by distributing eight of its prizes this year to foreigners, it announced Thursday.
The institution, which can boast of having invented literary prizes in the 1670s, elected as permanent secretary in September a Franco-Lebanese, Amin Maalouf. He made opening up to other French-speaking countries one of his priorities.
Two of these prizes are intended by nature for foreigners: the Grand Prix de la francophonie goes to the Moroccan writer and academic Abdelfattah Kilito and the Grande Médaille de la francophonie to the American university professor Edwin M. Duval.
After becoming the first living author in the French baccalaureate program, Quebecer Hélène Dorion was crowned with the Grand Prize for poetry, for all of her work.
The Italian-Belgian Salvatore Adamo receives the Grand Medal for French song and the Swiss Ruedi Imbach, who writes in both French and German, the Grand Prix for philosophy.
The Grand Prix Hervé Deluen, awarded to those who defend French as an international language, rewards a French-speaking Ukrainian, the philosopher Constantin Sigov.
The American Dana Kress, specialist in Louisiana literature, and the Italian historian Francesco Massa are among the winners of the Prize for the influence of French language and literature. This is also the case for Emmanuel Khérad, the presenter of the show La Librairie francophone, broadcast in several countries but which France Inter radio has decided to stop.
Finally, more daring, the Grand Prix Moron crowns a work initially published in English: the essay “The Survival of the Mediocre” by the Israeli Daniel S. Milo, who teaches in Paris.
Other notable winners: Florian Zeller with the Theater Prize, the designer Plantu with the Léon de Rosen Prize (work on the environment) after “Bad Times for the Planet”, or the director Pascal Bonitzer with the Cinema Prize.