Paris (AFP)

Unhappy finalist of the Goncourt and Renaudot prizes, Jean-Luc Coatalem received Wednesday the Jean Giono prize for "The part of the son", a story in which the writer investigates the disappearance of his grandfather who died in a concentration camp .

Awarded each year "to the best + storyteller +, it rewards a book in French leaving a large space for imagination". With 10,000 euros, it is sponsored by the Jan Michalski Foundation.

Contrary to his previous stories of adventures ("I'm in the South Seas", Grasset, 2001, price of Deux-Magots, where he went in search of Paul Gauguin or "My steps go elsewhere", Stock, 2017 , price Femina essay, in the footsteps of Victor Segalen), "The share of the son" (Stock) is a more intimate text.

Jean-Luc Coatalem sought in this book to lift the veil on a heavy family secret: the arrest by the Gestapo in 1943 in Brest of his grandfather Paol that the writer-traveler, born in 1959, did not not known but whose memory has never ceased to haunt him.

The sons of Paol, Ronan and Pierre, respectively uncle and father of Jean-Luc Coatalem, categorically kept silent about the disappearance of their father. They went so far as to forbid Jean-Luc Coatalem to speak about this matter in public. Misfortune is not a subject.

Is this why the story (272 pages, 19 euros) is presented as a novel? The claimed purpose of the writer was to recount "the fate of my grandfather, his family, ours".

To speak of the obstinacy of the Bretons is a cliché of course. But Jean-Luc Coatalem clung to this story until he succeeded in unraveling the threads of a seemingly inextricable skein.

Paol was denounced as resistant by a neighbor. Deported to Buchenwald, he served as a slave in the underground Dora camp where were manufactured V2 who terrorized London at the end of the war.

The engineer who designed these machines was called Wernher von Braun. Recovered by the Americans, the ex-Nazi set up the American space program.

There are poignant pages when Jean-Luc Coatalem discovering the tragic fate of his grandfather remembers that summer night 1969 when his father woke him around 4:00 am to watch on TV the first man to walk the lunar ground .

The former executioner had become a hero, his victim an anonymous death.

At the end of his quest, Jean-Luc Coatalem sent his family the file of his research. Out of his silence, his father will send him back a letter recapitulating everything he knew about Paol. Jean-Luc Coatalem did not betray his, he became their memory.

Last year, the Jean Giono prize was awarded to Paul Greveillac for "Masters and Slaves" (Gallimard).

© 2019 AFP