Étienne de Montety wins the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française for "The great test"

Étienne de Montety, winner of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française 2020 for “The great test”.

Patrice Normand

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

2 min

After postponing the date of the announcement as a sign of solidarity with booksellers, the French Academy awarded this Thursday, November 26, two days before the reopening of bookstores in France, its Grand Prix du roman to Étienne de Montety for his novel "The great test".

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During the videoconference announcement, the lucky winner declared that he found himself, thanks to the French Academy prize, " 

a bit like the swallow that will make the spring of bookshops

".    

The Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française, created in 1914, ensures the winner an endowment of 10,000 euros, but above all very good sales in bookstores.

Bookstores preparing to reopen their doors in France on Saturday, November 28.   

With his fourth novel, Étienne de Montety, 55, a journalist at

Le Figaro littéraire

, therefore stood out among the three finalists.

The great trial

 (Stock editions) is loosely inspired by the massacre of the priest Jacques Hamel during the Islamist attack in the small Norman church of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, in July 2016. The novel evokes spiritual strength of the priest, but especially tries to trace the radicalization and the outburst of two young boys suffering from identity disorders and who then cling to a murderous ideology found on the internet.

The French Academy and the Booker Prize

Unlike the Booker Prize 2020, a prestigious British literary prize, which this year showed in its final list a strong desire for diversity with four first novels and four women, including two of African origin, the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française had selected three men among the three finalists of the prize, including Miguel Bonnefoy for

Héritage

 and Maël Renouard for

L'Historiographe du Royaume

.  

The Covid pandemic continues to shake up the literary price season in France.

The Goncourt and Renaudot prizes will be awarded on Monday, November 30 at 12:30 p.m., also by videoconference.

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