Mathieu Palain wins the Interallié award

As every year, the jurors of the Interallié Prize met at the Lasserre restaurant to award their reward.

After having reduced their last list to four names, they finally chose to crown, this Wednesday, November 11, Mathieu Palain for his second book

(The Iconoclast).

He was elected in the second round, by five votes against one vote for Stéphane Hoffmann and one vote for Lilia Hassaine, who was not on the last list.

He faced Simonetta Greggio,

(Stock), Stéphane Hoffmann,

, (Albin Michel), and François-Henri Désrable, for

(Gallimard). Note that the latter appeared in the last selection of the Interallie, but that by tradition, the jury does not award its award to a work already crowned with a grand prize, in this case, the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie. French.

It is definitely good to publish a second novel to win a literary award. In 2016, Leïla Slimani obtained the Goncourt for

, in 2017, Olivier Guez won the Renaudot for

and in 2019, the jurors of the Prix Goncourt and Renaudot made a double blow with Nicolas Mathieu and Valérie Manteau who each published their own second title. More recently, on November 4, Abel Quentin won the Flore prize with

(The Observatory).

The novel which features the meeting between a journalist and an athlete in a parlor has already received the News and Blù Jean-Marc Roberts prizes, and appeared on the Renaudot and Flore lists. With 6000 copies sold, according to GfK, the book was warmly noticed by critics. In the October 28 issue of Figaro Littéraire, Mohammed Aïssaoui had these words of praise:

The author, 33, journalist working for

, will join the jury the following year.

He succeeds Irène Frain and her novel

(Seuil).