The rewards just keep piling up.
Already crowned with numerous prizes, including the “Goncourt of animals”, Cédric Sapin-Defour received the trophy for best author 2024 on March 25. A distinction which crowns the extraordinary success of
His Odor After the Rain
, with which he a touching tribute to his dog Ubac, who died in 2017.
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Of a singular genre, the novel, which is sometimes also presented as an essay, is a true literary phenomenon.
Published in spring 2023, it quickly rose to the top of the French bestsellers, selling more than 300,000 copies, before achieving international fame: the rights to the work have been sold in more than one ten languages, while projects for adaptation into comics and cinema are discussed.
“
A summary of intelligence and love
”
His smell after the rain
remains an intimate work, “
a summary of intelligence and love
” according to Jean-Paul Dubois, author of a preface, where the underside of a relationship as singular as universal.
The pages unfold as a life unfolds, an adventure: that of an encounter between a man and his dog which will last thirteen years.
“
He looked at me, I looked at him, we said to each other, it’s you, and the earth changed axis
,” writes Cédric Sapin-Defour.
What is most touching about the story is the way it opens a new horizon on the world.
Its smell after the rain
is a side step, a side path that invites us, following Ubac, to marvel at the present moment and its ephemeral beauties.
“
This dog is teaching me
again to read the living things around me, to listen to the music of nature, its amplitudes, its breathing.
»
Thanks to Cédric Sapin-Defour, we experience another look at nature, gentler, more attentive, less predatory.
A way of inhabiting the world more simply, which Christian Bobin called contemplation.
He wrote: “
Moments of contemplation are moments of great respite for the world, because it is in these moments that reality is no longer afraid of reaching us.
»
In 2023, the author of the year was an author, it was Annie Ernaux.
Cédric Sapin-Defour joins a serious list of authors including Vanessa Springora and Djaïli Amadou Amal.