The Ouest-France Étonnants Voyageurs prize was awarded Sunday in Saint-Malo to Marie Charrel, novelist and journalist, for Les Mangeurs de nuit (L'Observatoire), a novel in which a daughter of Japanese immigrants meets a hermit who watches over a forest in Canada.
In her seventh novel, Marie Charrel, 40, born in Annecy tells the story of Hannah, a "nisei" (daughter of Japanese immigrants) and her meeting in British Columbia with Jack, a man watching over the forest and who takes refuge in Indigenous legends since his brother's departure to war, says the publisher's file. Marie Charrel's novel has already received the 2023 Prix du livre France Bleu-Page des libraires, and the Prix Caze de la Brasserie Lipp.
"The initial idea is to talk about forests, one way or another. The meeting takes place just after the Second World War and traces Hannah's story back to her history in Japan," Charrel told AFP. This novel "touches on questions of identity, immigration," recalls the novelist. In North America "there was this labour immigration to Canada with first the men, the women who followed them." "There is this desire to talk about elsewhere, these stories that take place on other continents but that speak to us, immigration, rejection of the other, to talk about the living, forests and this nature that we are destroying and which is something beautiful," says Marie Charrel.
The Ouest-France Étonnants Voyageurs prize, endowed with 2,000 euros, is awarded each year by a jury of ten young readers aged 15 to 20, after a first selection by an adult jury. The "Seafarers" Prize, awarded to the author of a recent book of a maritime nature, was awarded to Julian Sancton for Nightmare in Antarctica (Payot). The Prix Nicolas-Bouvier, in tribute to the late travel writer, who accompanied the Étonnants Voyageurs festival in its early years, goes to François-Henri Désérable for L'Usure d'un monde (Gallimard). The author recounts his "40-day journey in Iran, at the height of the uprising" against the regime.
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The Joseph-Kessel Prize was awarded to Sibylle Grimbert, Le Dernier des siens (Anne Carrière). Created in 1990, the Étonnants Voyageurs literature and film festival attracts up to 60,000 visitors each year and welcomes this year 150 guests from 30 countries, according to the organizers. This 33rd edition will end on Monday.