After Kevin Lambert, who found himself this week in the first selection of the Goncourt and Décembre prizes, it is the turn of Éric Chacour to rise to the Renaudot prize for his first novel, Ce que je sais de toi.
The Montreal author, whose novel was published at the beginning of the year by Alto, is published in France by Philippe Rey. He also won the Première Plume prize in France last week, which aims to highlight emerging authors.
On Wednesday, it was also the turn of Louis-Daniel Godin to be nominated by the jury for the Wepler Prize – Fondation La Poste, in France, for his novel Lecompte est bon.
The second and third selections for the Renaudot will be announced on October 5 and 26, while the prize will be awarded on November 7, along with the Goncourt.
The first selection of novels in the running for the 2023 Renaudot Prize includes 16 titles including those by Sorj Chalandon L’Enragé and Fred Vargas On the Slab, the jury announced Thursday.
The presence of the author of thrillers, whose adventures with Commissioner Adamsberg resumed in May after a six-year hiatus, is the surprise of this list. The genre is in fact rarely appreciated by the juries of the fall awards.
Among the essays, we note the presence of a summer bookstore success, His smell after the rain by Cédric Sapin-Dufour, released at the end of March.
Other autobiographical stories, such as those of Nathacha Appanah, Agnès Desarthe, Négar Djavadi or Paul Pawlovitch, are also classified among the essays.
The unexpected name is a Senegalese essayist, El Hadj Souleymane Gassama (known as Elgas), with an essay on French-speaking African literature and thought.
Mokhtar Amoudi achieves the rare feat of being in the first selection of Goncourt and Renaudot with his first novel. Antoine Sénanque and Gaspard Kœnig are also there, but this is not their first novel.
