(Rennes) Double blow for Neige Sinno: after Femina, she won the 2023 Goncourt prize for high school students on Thursday for her book Triste tigre, awarded by a jury representing around fifty French high schools.
Triste tigre (P. O. L), a story about incest, is rewarded “for its literary qualities and its daring form to tackle a sensitive subject”, declared Méline Debailleul, Terminale student and spokesperson for the jury, live on M6 from Rennes, where this little brother of Goncourt was created in 1988.
Neige Sinno, 46, for her part reacted in duplex on the same channel by thanking “from the bottom of my heart the high school students who read my book and who trusted its audacity”.
“The reading we do when we’re young is so important. It’s readings that change us and I’m happy to know that perhaps this text, my writing, will produce something in the future of a person, it’s great, it makes me very, very happy “, she added.
Also a finalist for the Goncourt for adults, Sad Tiger is the story of incest of which the author was a victim as a child, as well as a more general reflection on sexual violence.
The young jurors interviewed by AFP after the prize was announced all insisted on the originality and strength of Neige Sinno’s writing.
“The way she approaches this subject is quite new, she speaks directly to the reader, this book is something that changes you,” said Pauline Estève, 15 years old and a 1st year student at the Lacroix high school in Narbonne (Aude).
“This dialogue that she establishes with the reader is very interesting, it provokes questions,” added Louise Douchy, 2nd grade student at Sées.
“We can qualify it as an artistic object” which goes beyond a simple book, said Emir Chabaane, in 1st grade at the Bernard Palissy high school in Gien.
The deliberations between the thirteen jurors representing high school students from 54 establishments were “very tense” Thursday morning, according to the young man, with “several hours of debates, refutations and counter-arguments, but we ended up settling agreement “.
Neige Sinno, a 28-year-old doctor of letters, chose emigration for her career, far from the Hautes-Alpes where she grew up. She now teaches in a branch of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Morelia.
Before Sad Tiger, she had gone almost unnoticed in literature, with a collection of short stories in 2007 (The Life of Rats) and a novel in 2018 (The Truck), published by small publishers.
This third book was unanimous among literary critics. However, it had been refused by several competitors from P. O. L editions, before she passed it on to this house which hastened to offer her a contract.
Very influential in terms of sales, the Goncourt des lycéens, which designates its winner from the same selection as that of the Académie Goncourt, can represent in certain years several hundred thousand copies sold.
The Goncourt for high school students, organized by Fnac and the Ministry of National Education, takes place every year from September to November. It allows some 2,000 students from second to BTS to discover contemporary literature and to promote a taste for reading in their establishments.
In 2022, the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens was awarded to Sabyl Ghoussoub for her novel Beyrouth-sur-Seine (Stock).
