• Your newspaper is launching this Friday the third edition of its “20 Minutes” novel award, open until January 31.

  • "The conquest" is the imposed theme, but the subject itself and the literary genre remain completely free.

  • Maxime Chattam's advice: "Keep this theme in mind, but first tell the story that is close to your heart".

Tempted by the adventure of writing?

The third edition of the

20 Minutes

of the novel

prize

is launched this Friday, still under the aegis of a jury chaired by Maxime Chattam.

Like Giselda Gargano in 2021 and Estelle Tolliac in 2020, the next winner of our writing competition will have her manuscript published at the end of 2022.

No privileged literary genre: white, black literature, romance, history, anticipation, fantasy… anything goes.

Only the theme is imposed: "the conquest", as a nod to the conquest of space which currently makes you dream so much, to the amorous conquest in the time of the Covid, to the conquest of power in this future year of presidential election…

What conquest will you imagine?

But the conquest that interests us is obviously the one you are going to imagine… "Is the conquest going to be something personal, the conquest of oneself or the conquest of the other?" Is it going to talk about the world? Will it be concrete, abstract, pictorial? Obviously, in the jury, we will look at how you respected the theme, but what matters is how this theme, "the conquest", can resonate with your subjects and your writing desires ... ", specifies the president of the jury.

And he, Maxime Chattam, as a famous writer of thrillers bordering on the fantastic, what idea could come to his mind?

“What would amuse me is to develop a conquest at all levels, imagine a character who would set out to conquer the world by trying to impose his megalomaniac vision on the rest of the planet after having chained the amorous conquests and who , finally… would find himself alone to have to reconquer himself!

"

Send us your manuscripts before January 31, 2022

You were 345 of our readers to have worked on the theme "the world after" in 2021. We hope at least as many of you to record a manuscript on the theme of "the conquest" next year.

Appointment to register your manuscript before January 31, 2022 on the dedicated platform of our partner editor, Les Nouveaux Auteurs, who will make a first selection.

Contributors to the 20 Minutes-Books platform will draw on this selection to determine the four or five finalists who will be submitted to the jury at the end of the summer.

The winning manuscript will be published in bookstores before the end of 2022. Perhaps yours?

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