Paris (AFP)

Heartbreaking for the jurors who award the Interallie Prize: they have given up the libations which were to allow them a second selection of novels.

Because these times of pandemic are hard, for all literary juries.

"Due to the rules installed with the health crisis in restaurants, the jury will not be able to meet tomorrow", announced on October 12 the spokesperson for the Interallie Prize.

This exclusively male jury did not see itself, for the moment, functioning differently than usual: a good table, and deliberations that could last late into the evening, around a bottle.

The situation has worsened since then.

While it was already forbidden to have more than six at the table, now the curfew requires having finished at 9 p.m., in addition.

There will be a selection of finalists on November 12, to award the prize on the 18th, according to terms yet to be determined.

Their colleagues from Femina, an exclusively female jury, say they are doing good hearted against bad luck.

"There are six of us around one table and six around another, even if at the moment that is not necessarily essential because there are some absent. Otherwise we do it in a private apartment", confides to AFP the secretary Anne de Caumont.

- Video conferencing -

For the award ceremony on November 3, "people will have to be seated and remain seated. We will no longer have people standing or holding microphones. We adapt, because our cultural life, especially , keep on going".

The solution may also lie in new technologies ... to the detriment of a certain user-friendliness, of course.

This is what the academicians of Goncourt are trying.

"Tuesday, in order to avoid the travel of several of them who do not live in Ile-de-France, they will meet by videoconference as has been the case several times during the confinement", explains to AFP their secretary Françoise Rossinot.

The most prestigious French literary prize had already announced in September that it was abandoning the crush of the Goncourt salon at the Drouant restaurant for its 2020 edition.

Deliberations now take place in a larger salon at the same facility, and the winner, on November 10, must be announced from the balcony.

The jury of the other prize awarded the same day, the Renaudot, affirms that it continues so far without too much disturbance, but that on D-day, it could exceptionally meet in a smaller committee than its current eight jurors.

"Between the selection meetings we communicate by email and phone. So nothing but very usual, except that some jurors are for the time being retained outside Paris. If necessary they will vote by phone on November 10," says the president of the jury , Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud.

- "Reduced audience" -

The same goes for the Medici, awarded on November 6.

"We exchange a lot by collective emails on this subject and precisely we will meet by videoconference on Monday evening to discuss the measures we will take," Marie Darrieusecq, who holds the rotating presidency of the jury, told AFP.

The French Academy, to present its own prize on October 29, had to drastically reduce its guest list under the dome.

"The proclamation of the Grand Prix du roman will not take, this year, traditional forms and will only take place in the presence of a small audience," reads its invitation card.

And for the prizes already awarded, it was not really time to celebrate: distancing, hydroalcoholic gel and masks ...

In the photo of the 2020 Landerneau Readers' Prize, awarded in mid-October, the winner Lola Lafon ("Chavirer") is immortalized with this mask, as are the presidents of the jury by her side, the novelist Karine Tuil and the entrepreneur Edouard Leclerc.

The same goes for the Gulli prize for children's novels, won by Timothée de Fombelle ("Alma, le vent se lève").

"Masked, from a distance, we nonetheless exchanged with passion, depth and lightness", underlined the president of the jury, Michelle Reiser.

© 2020 AFP