As soon as the Goncourt was announced, the Renaudot in turn unveiled its winner.
Amélie Nothomb was elected by six votes, in the second round, against Anne Berest (two votes), Abel Quentin (one vote) and Nicolas Chemla who was so far high in the predictions of many critics.
His name had been whispered for more than a decade for the Goncourt and Renaudot awards.
Again last year, the author with 1000 hats was the favorite in the last square of Goncourt, before being doubled by Hervé Le Tellier.
Today it is done.
Amélie Nothomb's name is no longer a whisper but a cry.
She has just won the Renaudot prize for Premier Sang (Albin Michel).
To read also Amélie Nothomb, daughter to the father
It is a consecration for Amélie Nothomb. First, because the author who publishes a book each year at the start of the September school year is still number one in bookstore sales. To date,
230,000 copies of
First Blood
have been produced. A new circulation of 100,000 copies is already planned. This price will not change anything on this ascending tangent, but it gives this public success a critical success. Then, because it crowns almost thirty years of literary career. In 1999, she won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française with Stupeur et tremblements. After that, it was not until 2007 that she won the Flore prize with neither Eve nor Adam and the Giono in 2008. Finally, becauseit is symbolic and resonates doubly in the heart of mysticism.
First blood
is her 30th novel, the one about her father who died on March 17, 2020, the first day of the first confinement. At the time, like millions of French people, Amélie Nothomb was forced to stay at home. She can neither meditate at her grave nor say goodbye to him. She writes, she talks to him while cycling in Paris, she concocts soft-boiled eggs as he loved to eat them so much. Time passes but the suffering remains. So, as the leaves turn red and fall from the trees, she says to herself,
"Give your writing the power to resurrect your father and say goodbye to him
." Thus was born
First Blood
, the novel of the father, the daughter and the holy writing.
The book opens in 1964, in Congo, when Patrick Nothomb, consul in Stanleyville, faces a firing squad. Are we going to kill him? Amélie Nothomb does not breathe a word and goes back in time. Patrick is a little boy. Fatherless, he desperately seeks his mother's love, incapable of the slightest affectionate gesture. He was sent to the Nothombs at the Château du Pont d'Oye. There, he discovers a tribe of wild children that his grandfather, Pierre Nothomb, is starving. Man is terribly detestable. New ellipse. It follows the meeting of Patrick and his future wife, then his hostage-taking or how, by transforming himself into Scheherazade, he saved nearly 5000 civilians….
Amélie Nothomb succeeds Marie-Hélène Lafon, who won the Renaudot 2020 prize with
Histoire du fils
(Buchet Chastel).
She joined a prestigious list of awards which included among others: Sylvain Tesson, Valérie Manteau, Olivier Guez, Yasmina Reza, Emmanuel Carrère, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Claudel, Dominique Bona, Annie Ernaux, Jean-Marie Rouart ...
Theater critic at
Le Figaro,
Anthony Palou is crowned Renaudot of the essay with
Dans ma rue yait trois boutiques
(Presses de la Cité).
In 2020, Dominique Fortier won with his
Villes de Papiers
, published by Grasset.
For the Renaudot prize for the essay, the jury had chosen two other titles:
Saint Phalle
(Stock) by Gwenaëlle Aubry, fictionalized biography of the artist Niki de Saint Phalle and
La Dame couchée
(Seuil) by Sandra Vanbremeersch, portrait of Lucette Destouches, the widow of the writer Céline.
