"It was as if I had won the Tour de France," described the winner of the Prix Goncourt 2018, Nicolas Mathieu, in the SPIEGEL interview the reaction in his home region of Lorraine. 2019 may now be cheered in Toulouse, where Jean-Paul Dubois was born in 1950 and where the writer now lives again. Because Dubois receives the Prix Goncourt for his novel "Tous les hommes n'habitent pas le monde de la même façon" (about: The people inhabit the earth in different ways) ..
Dubois, who studied sociology, worked for several years as a sports reporter for various daily newspapers. He has published numerous novels, the most famous of which is probably "Une vie française" (German "A French Life", 2005), which was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina. In German "The Case of Sneijder" (dtv, 2014) was published in German. His autobiographical report "Today will be nothing! My year with craftsmen" (rororo, 2010) was translated.
For "Tous les hommes n'habitent pas le monde de la même façon", six of the academy members voted in the final vote, traditionally held in the Parisian restaurant Drouant. Four votes went to the successful in Germany for years Belgian author Amélie Nothomb, which was nominated for her novel "Soif".
In this award-winning novel, Paul Hansen, a pastor's son who is trapped in a prison in Montreal, tells in a tragicomic tone of his eventful life. Jean-Paul Dubois was already in the shortlist of the Goncourt jury in 2016 with his previous novel, "La succession".
As Goncourt Prize winner, Dubois can now count on a sales success; He joins a tradition-rich list of winners since 1903. Exactly 100 years ago, Marcel Proust was awarded. In 2018, the prize went to Nicolas Mathieu, in 2017 to Éric Vuillard and in 2016 to Leïla Slimani.