The writer Pierre Guyotat, winner of the Prix Médicis in 2018, died on the night of Thursday to Friday at the age of 80, his family announced Friday at AFP.
Preferring discretion to light, the writer will remain as the author of two major works of French literature of the twentieth century: Tomb for five hundred thousand soldiers (1967), perhaps the largest book on the war in Algeria (adapted by Antoine Vitez at Chaillot in 1981) and Éden, Éden, Éden (1970), book deemed pornographic by the French authorities at the time, prohibited from advertising, display and sale to minors.
Jack Lang expresses "immense sorrow"
In 1970, this second book had missed the Médicis prize by one voice. Furious at this rejection, Claude Simon, future Nobel Prize for literature, resigned from the jury. The scandal is immense. The book ban was only lifted in 1981! Guyotat took his revenge 48 years later by receiving (finally) the Medici for Idioty (Grasset), a book in which he returned to his journey. Also in 2018, the writer was crowned with a special prize from the Femina jury and the prize for the French language for all of his work.
He died "overnight Thursday to Friday" in hospital, his nephew Florent Guyotat told AFP. First to react, the former Minister of Culture Jack Lang expressed his "immense sorrow" after the disappearance of his "very dear friend". "This literary goldsmith, a true virtuoso, poet possessed by words, was a unique artist, determined and demanding," Jack Lang posted on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.