The novelist, essayist, Sébastien Lapaque, 50, received Tuesday May 4 the 34 th Jean Freustié prize for
Ce monde est so beau
, (Actes Sud), a book which tells the rebirth of a disillusioned man.
He succeeds Anne-Sophie Stefanini, distinguished last year for
Cette Inconnue
(Gallimard).
Published in January,
This world is so beautiful
is the fifth novel by the author, free spirit and great connoisseur of Georges Bernanos.
His hero, a high school teacher called Lazare, disgusted by the ugliness around him, will find faith at the end of a journey towards subtle harmony.
Erudition and curiosity
In the January 14 issue of Figaro Littéraire, Alice Ferney spoke of it in these laudatory terms:
“Sébastien Lapaque's erudition and curiosity are not forbidden to any subject. The couple, procreation in the technological age, the challenges and errors of pedagogy, the devil, the life of forests and that of birds, rugby, the race of the clouds (the sky, present literally and figuratively) , everything interests him and fascinates us in this great text dedicated to living things, to green things. ”
The Jean Freustié Prize, created in 1987, is one of the best endowed literary prizes in France, with 25,000 euros.
Supported by the Fondation de France, it
"mainly crowns a promising author or encourages a writer whose work, insufficiently recognized, has not been the subject of a grand prix littéraire d'automne"
.
The winners of this prize include, in particular, Étienne de Montety (2017), Olivier Frébourg (2014), Jean Rolin (2002), Charles Dantzig (2001).
Les Bons Garçons
by Pierre Adrian (Les Équateurs) and
L'Homme qui marche
by Jean-Paul Delfino (Héloïse d'Ormesson) also received votes.
The jury, chaired by Anthony Palou, was made up of Charles Dantzig, Annick Geille, Henri-Hugues Lejeune, Olivier Mony, Éric Neuhoff, Yann Queffélec, Philippe Vilain
.
