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Sylvain Prudhomme, winner of the Prix Femina for "By Roads" (Gallimard), here in September 2019. Joel Saget / AFP

Writer Sylvain Prudhomme won the Femina 2019 award on Tuesday November 5th for his book "By the Roads", dedicated to hitchhiking. The prize Femina Abroad was awarded by the exclusively female jury to Spaniard Manuel Vilas for "Ordesa", translated by Isabelle Gugnon.

Hitch-hiking, a culture of mobility that has almost disappeared, is at the heart of Sylvain Prudhomme's account of this novel told in the first person. This spirit of openness towards others, united with the will to move, a risk-taking and the hope of unexpected and enriching encounters, is also reflected in the author's particular style of writing, some of which praise the absence of too much punctuation, leaving the reader to judge the expressiveness of the sentence.

In By Roads (Editions Gallimard), the protagonist of the story is called Sacha. Parisian writer, forty, he is in the middle of an existential crisis, without child or woman. He dreams of " a more true existence ", decides to leave the capital, change his air and seek a new, quieter life in a small town in the south-east of France. He then finds a friend of youth, once the incarnation of freedom that led him at the time to share his passion for hitchhiking. Today, he finds him happy, family man, and always adept at hitchhiking to quench his thirst for freedom.

Sylvain Prudhomme, a childhood in Africa

Tragic paradox is the admiration that Sacha brings to this family symphony of the hitchhiker that will sway the balance finally very fragile couple. In other words, By the roads delicately shows us that the path to the other is strewn with pitfalls and other possible existences.

Born in 1979, in Seyne-sur-Mer, Sylvain Prudhomme lives today in Arles. Aggregated with modern letters, he has already been awarded for the book By the Roads by the Landerneau Prize. He is also the author of eight books and has written many reports including some located in Africa, but also a collection of tales of Benin, Contes du pays tammari , published in 2003 by Karthala editions.

His attraction to the black continent is due to having lived part of his childhood in Cameroon, Burundi, Niger and Mauritius. After studying in Paris, he directed between 2010 and 2012 the Franco-Senegalese Alliance of Ziguinchor, Senegal. He is also a translator of the essay Decolonizing the Spirit of Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o . In 2012, he won the Louis-Guilloux award for his story of an Algerian farmer at the time of the fight for independence, Là, Bahi said .