Hordes of poles, nudges, a happy author on the balcony… You won't see any of this today, when the Goncourt Prize was awarded.
This year, the Covid pandemic got the better of the usual crowd in the Drouant restaurant, which, for health reasons, still has its doors closed.
Read also:
The anomaly,
by Hervé Le Tellier: is there a pilot in the plane?
Social distancing requires, the jurors of the Academy therefore met in videoconference on Zoom, one of the new virtual meeting points since the first confinement, to deliberate.
At 12:30 p.m., behind its screen, the jury announced its winner, through the voice of its president Didier Decoin.
It is Hervé Le Tellier who wins with
L'Anomalie
(ed. Gallimard), the 2020 Goncourt prize. He thus succeeds Jean-Paul Dubois and his novel
Tous les hommes n'inhabitant le monde dans le monde dans le monde the same way
(ed. de l'Olivier).
Detective story, adventure and love
Should it be specified in advance?
Hervé Le Tellier is a member of Oulipo, a literary group that plays around with the constraints and paradoxes of the French language in order to gain new freedom of expression.
The Disappearance
of Perec, for example, is one of the most famous lipograms in literature.
In his novel, the author reconnects with this creative spirit and plays with the traditional pattern of the novel to offer several stories in one book.
Detective story, adventure, love…
The Anomaly
is all of these at the same time.
An OLNI, literally, an unidentified literary object.
This gives an original work, offbeat but not wobbly, which therefore seduced the prize jury.
Born April 21, 1957, Hervé Le Tellier first chose the voice of mathematics before turning to journalism.
Without losing its scientific fiber.
"I turned to the CFJ, where I was received and, very quickly, I entered science journals"
, he explained during an interview with
Paris Match
.
And then in 1984, he published his first novel, he explains.
It is the beginning of a long line of collections, poetry, epistolary, short stories, travel, erotics and essays.
Faithful to the Oulipian tradition, the author makes literature an "objeu" of "objoie".
This joke is reflected in the titles of his works.
Note:
Zindien
,
La Chapelle Sextine
,
Mona Lisa up to a hundred
, all published by Le Castor astral.
At the same time, the author published news in the late
L'Événement du Jeudi
and in the satirical newspaper
La Grosse Bertha
.
Multiple collaborations followed with
Le Monde
and the magazine
Nouvelles Clés
.
His translation of
Liquid Tales
by Jaime Montestrela (ed. Of L'attente) received the Grand Prize for Black Humor in 2013.
It was not long before the lucky winner was never named.
Remember, there are still four days, bookstores were closed because they were considered non-essential businesses.
As support, the Goncourt jury, which was to award its traditional prize at the end of November, had decided to postpone it
sine die
.
An offensive quickly followed by the Renaudot, the French Academy, the Goncourt of high school students, the Flore and the Interallié (except the Femina and the Medici who refused to support this movement).
But now, the book breathes again.
Readers can now go to bookstores and buy Hervé Le Tellier's novel in stores or "clicked-delivered".