(Paris) The novelist Ann Scott won the Renaudot prize on Tuesday, at the age of 58, for her novel Les insolents, retracing the story of a forty-year-old who leaves Paris, published by Calman-Lévy.
Les insolents tells the story of the arrival “in the middle of nowhere” of Alex, a film music composer who decides to leave the capital to reinvent herself, wishing to live “elsewhere and alone”.
The character is a fictional double of the author, who left Paris for Brittany, where she now lives.
Born to a Russian photographer mother and a French art collector father, Ann Scott grew up in Paris before moving to London at 17.
She was a model, a drummer in a punk band and frequented the underground Parisian night scene a lot. She started writing at the age of 29, notably writing the novel Asphyxie, then Superstar.
She was not a favorite for the Renaudot, a prize for which Gaspard Kœnig (Humus at L’Observatoire), Lilia Hassaine (Panorama at Gallimard) and Sorj Chalandon (L’enragé at Grasset) were also in the running.
The essay prize was awarded to Jean-Luc Barré for the first volume, in more than 900 pages, of a huge biography: De Gaulle, une vie: l’homme de Personne (1890-1944), published by Grasset. This sum was published on October 18 and entered directly into the list of finalists for the Renaudot essay.
The Renaudot prize for the Pocket Book went to Manuel Carcassonne for The Reversal.
