The prize must be awarded to the writer on Sunday, during the 32nd edition of this book and film festival in Saint-Malo, in Brittany.

Released in August, "Fenua", the Polynesian name for Tahiti, recounts the writer's three-month stay in French Polynesia.

"This book, with its generous writing and warm look, is not only part of Deville's great work throughout the world, but also in the vein of Joseph Kessel, who would have liked this other witness among men", indicated the jury in a press release.

Patrick Deville, 64, from the Saint-Nazaire region (Loire-Atlantique), has become a traveler with a career as an embassy cultural attaché.

He won the Femina 2021 prize with "Peste & Cholera", a fictionalized biography of Alexandre Yersin, Franco-Swiss who discovered the plague bacillus and designed the first serum against the disease.

Some 150 writers are expected from Saturday to Monday in Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine), around the theme "re-enchanting the world": the Ukrainian Andreï Kourkov as guest of honor, but also Sorj Chalandon, Isabelle Autissier , the Cuban Leonardo Padura or the Haitian Louis-Philippe Dalembert.

© 2022 AFP