They were four finalists to claim the most prestigious literary prize. The ten jurors, seven men and three women, delivered their verdict at midday. The Goncourt 2022 prize, the 120th, was awarded to Brigitte Giraud for her novel “Live fast” (Flammarion). She succeeds Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
and his novel “The Most Secret Memory of Men”. She won in the 14th round of a very tight ballot against Giuliano da Empoli, thanks to the vote of President Didier Decoin who counted double.
In “Live fast”, Brigitte Giraud, 62, evokes the last days of her husband, killed in a motorcycle accident in 1999, and the aftermath of this tragedy. La Française is the first author to receive the most prestigious French-language literary prize since “Soft song” by Leila Slimani
in 2016, and the 13th woman.
As tradition dictates, Brigitte Giraud is also leaving with a check for ten euroswhich beneficiaries generally prefer to frame rather than deposit it in the bank.
A tribute to her husband
It is in tribute to her husband killed in an accident more than twenty years ago that the novelist Brigitte Giraud wrote “Live fast”. On June 22, 1999 in Lyon, her husband Claude starts too quickly at a traffic light, with an overly powerful motorcycle that is not his, and falls. He won’t recover. At the time of the tragedy, she was 36 years olda very young son, a house they had just bought, in which she moved in without him. “I knew for a long time that I would have to write the book. The book that lives up to Claude, of our love story, the one that embraces all that and that seeks the truth, all the truths”, she says. But “I could not have written it before a period of 20 years, because I had to be at a good distance”. The story, sober, was immediately well received by critics, and attracted the attention of several juries of the autumn awards.
Goncourt’s selection had been narrowed down to four authors, including another Frenchwoman Cloé Korman, an Italian-Swiss, Giuliano da Empoli, and a Haitian, Makenzy Orcel.
The Renaudot prize for Simon Liberati
The Renaudot prize was awarded Thursday to Simon Liberati for “Performance”, about a septuagenarian writer who reconnects with the sacred fire by writing a screenplay on the Rolling Stones, and has a relationship with a woman almost 50 years younger than him . He obtained 6 votes among the members of the jury.