Paris (AFP)
The novelist Luc Lang won Friday the Medici Prize, one of the most demanding literary awards, with "The Temptation" (Stock), a dark and powerful novel that tells the story of a world in human form collapse.
The foreign Medici has been awarded to the Icelandic Audur Ava Olafsdottir for "Miss Iceland", translated from Icelandic by Eric Boury (Zulma).
The Medici test was awarded to Bulle Ogier and Anne Diatkine for "I forgot" (Threshold).
"I tried to write an apocalypse," Luc Lang recently told an AFP journalist. Receiving his prize, the novelist, the voice tied by emotion, said "extremely touched". At the beginning of the week, the writer had been an unfortunate finalist of the Femina Prize. He is still in the running for the Wepler prize that will be awarded on Monday.
The novelist, aged 63, was in the running against Santiago H. Amigorena ("The Inner Ghetto", POL), Brigitte Giraud ("Day of Courage", Flammarion), the winner of the December Claudie Hunzinger Award ("The Great Deer ", Grasset), the primo-novelists Victor Jestin (" The Heat ", Flammarion) and Guillaume Lavenant (" Governing Protocol, Shores), Vincent Message ("Cora in the spiral", Seuil) and Christine Montalbetti ("My ancestor Fish ", POL).
Luc Lang, Goncourt high school students in 1998, tells us for years through his novels the end of illusions and "The temptation" is no exception to the rule. In a world where money is king, what place is left for values that have become obsolete like humanism, compassion or charity?
"Universal capitalism has become reality and leaves us without recourse," lamented Luc Lang during his meeting with AFP.
Reading his novel, one obviously thinks of Bernanos' "temptation of despair".
The novel ends in an explosion of violence, an apocalypse where, strangely, hope remains. "I wanted a joyous apocalypse," said the writer. An apocalypse as a redemption.
- The tears of Frederic Mitterrand -
Awarded by the foreign Medici, "Miss Iceland" is a novel both feminist and insolent. In the 1960s, Hekla left the family farm to fulfill his destiny: to become a writer.
"For a writer who writes in a minority and marginalized language like Icelandic, with 344,000 inhabitants, to receive this award is something extraordinary," noted Audur Ava Olafsdottir, a French-speaking female speaker after graduation. history of art in France.
The Medici essay has rewarded a sweet and melancholy book, like the actress Bulle Ogier, unforgettable performer of "The salamander", rewarded for "I forgot", a book written with her friend, the journalist Anne Diatkine.
"I forgot more than anything why I became an actress, me who was so shy and hated to show me," says the actress in this book published in September and where hangs the shadow of Pascale, his daughter disappeared brutally in October 1984.
By giving him his prize, Frédéric Mitterrand could not hold back his tears. While the actress thanked the members of the jury, the former Minister of Culture launched "you forget it!", A way to hide his immense emotion.
With the attribution of the Médicis, after the Goncourt (to Jean-Paul Dubois), the Renaudot (Sylvain Tesson), the Femina (Sylvain Prudhomme) and the December prize (Claudie Hunzinger), the season of the literary prices comes to an end .
Monday will be awarded the Wepler Prize, Tuesday the Flore Prize, Wednesday Interallié and Thursday the Goncourt high school students, one of the most influential literary awards for book sales.
© 2019 AFP