Paris (AFP)

The games are still far from being made but, with the selection of the Prix Femina jury on Wednesday, we now know all the actors in the running to win one of the great literary awards of autumn.

Three novelists, Santiago H. Amigorena ("The Inner Ghetto", POL), Nathacha Appanah ("The sky over the roof", Gallimard) and the first novelist Victor Jestin ("The heat", Flammarion), aged only 25 years old, have the formidable privilege of being in three out of four selections.

This is not necessarily good news for them. Last year, the novelist David Diop, the only author to be selected by Goncourt, Renaudot, Medici and Femina (for "Brother of soul", Seuil) had received none of these awards.

He had however won the Goncourt high school students. In 2017, François-Henri Désérable had also been selected by all the jury of the great literary prizes (for "Some Mr. Piekielny", Gallimard) and had left empty-handed.

Literary prizes are like a marathon.

The juries of Goncourt, Renaudot, Médicis and Femina have scheduled two other selections in October before awarding their prize in early November.

One of the biggest surprises of the first selections is the presence in that of Goncourt of the popular Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb.

Published by Albin Michel and benefiting from a circulation of 180,000 copies, "Soif", the 28th opus of the novelist, ranks unsurprisingly at the top of the category sales novels (large format) but Amélie Nothomb also succeeds the feat of 'to be at the top of the highly selective Top 20 GfK / Livres Hebdo which lists the best sales of books whatever the genre (novels, essays, comics ...) or format (large format or pocket).

The other highlight of the first selections is the absence of Yann Moix, crowned by Goncourt's first novel in 1996 and the Renaudot prize in 2013.

"Orleans" (Grasset) was the kind of novel formatted for the Goncourt but the family controversies that followed the publication of the book and the exhumation of antisemitic texts written by the writer in his youth have annihilated all his chances.

- Highlighting first-novelists -

In the absentees category, no jury wished to retain the novels of Sorj Chalandon ("A ferocious joy", Grasset), Laurent Binet ("Civilizations", Grasset) or Olivier Adam ("A part of badminton", Flammarion) ).

On the other hand, juries did not hesitate to put forward first-novelists. Besides Victor Jestin, present in the selection of Renaudot, Médicis and Femina, we notice Anne Pauly, already laureate of the prize Envoyé by La Poste, in the selection of Goncourt and Femina for "Before I forget" (Verdier) and Victoria Mas, laureate of the Stanislas prize for the first novel, which features in the selections of Renaudot and Femina for "Le bal des folles" (Albin Michel).

Several other novelists are also in two selections. This is the case of Karine Tuil, chosen by the jurors of Goncourt and Femina for "The human things" (Gallimard) but also of Dominique Barbéris (Goncourt and Femina for "A Sunday in Ville-d'Avray" at Arléa) , Jean-Luc Coatalem (Goncourt and Renaudot for "The part of the son" at Stock), Michael Ferrier (Renaudot and Femina for "Scrabble" at the Mercure de France), Claudie Hunzinger (Medicis and Femina for "The big deer" at Grasset ), Luc Lang (Medici and Femina for "The Temptation in Stock"), Vincent Message (Renaudot and Medicis for "Cora in the Spiral at Threshold"), Jean-Noël Orengo (Renaudot and Medicis for "The Red Jungle" at Grasset), Sylvain Prudhomme (Renaudot and Femina for "By Roads" at Gallimard) and finally Monica Sabolo (Medici and Femina for "Eden" at Gallimard).

The next selections will have value of cleaver for the dreams of price for novelists like Jean-Paul Dubois ("All the men do not live the earth in the same way" at L'Olivier) which is only the selection of Goncourt or Olivier Rolin (in the selection of Goncourt for "Outside world" at Gallimard).

Goncourt and Renaudot will be awarded on November 4th. The Femina Prize will be announced on November 5th and the Medici Prize on November 8th.

© 2019 AFP