She is the thirteenth woman to win this award. Brigitte Giraud wins the Prix Goncourt 2022 for live fast (Flammarion), Thursday 3 November. His intimate novel looks back on the chain of events that led to the death of his companion in a motorcycle accident in 1999.
She won in the 14th round of a very tight ballot against Giuliano da Empoli, thanks to the vote of President Didier Decoin who counts double, and thus succeeds the Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. The Académie Goncourt has chosen an author little known to the general public and not accustomed to large sales figures, thus pursuing a certain revival.
Lyonnaise, native of Algeria, Brigitte Giraud has written a dozen books, novels, essays or short stories. She obtained the Goncourt for short stories in 2007 for the collection Love is very overrated. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Prix Médicis for “Jour de courage”.
By choosing live fast, the Goncourt jurors choose a sober and sensitive story, which was immediately well received by critics. The author is inspired by the drama of her life, on June 22, 1999 in Lyon, when her husband Claude starts too quickly at a traffic light, with an overly powerful motorcycle which is not his, and falls. He won’t recover.
Three other authors were finalists of the oldest French literary prize, which since 1903 has rewarded “the best work of imagination in prose, published in the year” and written by a French-speaking author.
Long-time favorite Giuliano da Empoli, 49, who posted in April The Mage of the Kremlin (Gallimard editions), will ultimately have to settle for the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française, which he won at the end of October.
Again present in the final, the flourishing Haitian literature once again sees the Goncourt, Makenzy Orcel (A human sum at Rivages) failing to establish itself. No more than Cloé Korman, author and pen of the speeches of the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, who would compete with The Almost Sisterspublished by Seuil.
The Renaudot prize was also awarded Thursday to Simon Liberati for Performance (Grasset), 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. Claudie Hunzinger was also on the list of finalists for her novel A dog at my table.
Literary prizes, which often inspire French people wishing to discover or offer a novel at the end of the year, are a crucial economic issue. Le Goncourt in particular guarantees hundreds of thousands of sales.
And as tradition dictates, Brigitte Giraud also leaves with a check for ten euros, which the beneficiaries in general prefer to frame rather than deposit it in the bank.