Alexis Patri 2:00 p.m., February 13, 2022

At the microphone of Isabelle Morizet in the program "There is not just one life in life" on Sunday, the writer Pierre Lemaitre looks back on his personal and professional journey.

And in particular on his obtaining the Goncourt prize in 2013 for "Goodbye up there", which greatly agitated his subconscious for several weeks.

INTERVIEW

Many authors dream of it.

A few lucky ones get it.

Pierre Lemaitre had nightmares about it.

In 2013, the writer won the Goncourt Prize for his novel 

Goodbye up there

.

But Pierre Lemaitre had such a hard time realizing that he had won this prestigious literary award that he thought it was going to be taken away from him.

A nightmare that he recounts on Sunday at the microphone of Isabelle Morizet in the 

program There is not just one life in life

.

>> Find Isabelle Morizet's shows every weekend from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in podcast and replay here

"I salute the Académie Goncourt, which had, in my opinion, the will and the courage to crown a book which willingly presented itself both as a popular novel and as an adventure novel", explains Pierre Lemaitre, with a modesty that reveals the reasons why he had trouble accepting his coronation.

"Pierre, we made a mistake, give us back the Goncourt!"

"These are two labels that are not extremely well seen by literary professionals: popular literature, it looks bad, and the adventure novel, it looks rather childish. So, I was, a priori , not a very qualified man for the Goncourt. I had a crisis of legitimacy, but put yourself in my place: I received the Goncourt for a book that no one had seen coming.

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And this crisis of legitimacy in the face of the Goncourt prize has infused the writer's subconscious.

"In my dreams, Bernard Pivot told me 'Pierre, we made a mistake, give him back to us!' But my problem was that I didn't know what to give back. I had nothing in my hands !” exclaims the author on Europe 1. “And I did not think in my dream that the winner would be given this symbolic check for 10 euros and that I could have returned this check. I did not know what To do."

Sufficiently unpleasant the first time, this nightmare haunted Pierre Lemaitre several times.

"It was recurrent," he recalls.

"Not for very long, but it was an onset of discomfort that got me into trouble."

It was finally the time that allowed the writer to get out of this crisis of legitimacy, definitively destroyed in 2018 by the 5 Caesars repotted by the film adapted from his novel.

Pierre Lemaitre will leave with the César for best adaptation, which he shares with Albert Dupontel.