In New York, “La Carte postale” by Anne Berest wins the Goncourt American version

Published on : 01/05/2022 – 05:10

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New York (AFP) – The story about the Holocaust and the Jewish roots of the French writer Anne Berest, “La Carte postale”, at the heart of a controversy in the Parisian literary community, won the first Goncourt American version prize on Saturday in New York.

The most prestigious of French literary prizes has become internationalized with “Goncourt Prize selections” in 25 countries between university students in French and Francophone literature.

For the first time in the United States, the Académie Goncourt unveiled the “Goncourt United States Choice” on Saturday during a ceremony in Manhattan, at the cultural services of the French Embassy, ​​chaired by the writer Siri Hustvedt surrounded by a jury of students from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, New York and Duke universities.

These perfectly bilingual young people – Americans, French and other nationalities – studied in French the nine books of the final selection of the Goncourt 2021, won in November by the Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr for “The most secret memory of men” ( Editions Philippe Rey).

By attributing the Goncourt, in its American version, to Anne Berest for “La Carte postale” (Grasset), Siri Hustvedt – novelist, poet, essayist – underlined “the enormous importance that French literature had for ( to) develop as a human being and a writer”.

“The future lies in young generations around the world who read, are curious and dynamic, and literature is a vital tool for forging pluralism, tolerance and democracy at a time when these principles are under serious threat”, said worth the New York intellectual.

The choice of students from American universities was made by “consensus” on “The Postcard”, explained to AFP one of the jurors, Léa Jouannais, doctoral student at Yale.

This family story on the transmission of the memory of the Holocaust is “interesting for an American public who would not know in detail the history of the Collaboration in France, the way in which the Jews were treated in France during the Second World War” , estimated the student for whom the book, which will be translated into English, sheds light on “the current issue of anti-Semitism in France”.

In the fall of 2021, “La Carte postale” and “Les “Enfants de Cadillac” by François Noudelmann, two books dealing with the history of a Jewish family, were at the heart of a controversy in the Parisian literary community: Camille Laurens, juror of Goncourt, had made a very severe criticism in Le Monde of the story of Anne Berest, while she is the companion of François Noudelmann.

Consequently, the Académie Goncourt had declared ineligible “the works of the spouses, companions or close relatives of the members of the jury”. The Prix Femina had also discarded the two books.

© 2022 AFP

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