For its first edition, the detainees of Goncourt, an initiative led by the National Book Center (CNL), was awarded this Thursday to Sarah Jollien-Fardel for her novel “His favourite”.
The “national delegates have chosen to award the first Prisoner Goncourt prize to Sarah Jollien-Fardel for her novel ‘Sa Favourite’ published by Sabine Wespieser,” the CNL announced in a press release.
Within His favorite, Sarah Jollien-Fardel, born in Switzerland and author of her first novel at age 51, tells the story of a Valais mountaineer who seeks to rebuild after being persecuted throughout her childhood by her father. She also won the 2022 Prix du Roman Fnac.
Participation of 500 inmates
Created in 2022, the Goncourt Prisoner Award is run by the National Book Center and the prison administration, under the high patronage of the Goncourt Academy. A total of 500 prisoners in France participate in this initiative. The national jury was made up this year by 31 penitentiary establishments (detention centers and preventive detention centers).
The release of Goncourt’s detainees was announced last March by Roselyne Bachelot, then Minister of Culture, and Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti. They had gone to the Aix-Luynes (Bouches-du-Rhônes) preventive detention center to sign a new protocol there to promote access to culture for prisoners.
“The fifteen works selected by the Goncourt Academy will be proposed for deliberation and voting by people incarcerated in 30 penitentiary establishments who will have applied. The winner will be announced on December 15,” explained Roselyne Bachelot.
“Reuniting two worlds mistakenly considered distant”
“This initiative brings together two worlds erroneously considered distant, that of literary creation and that of the prison universe,” he greeted, recalling “the intimate link” between certain “masterpieces of literature and the drama of detention”, citing in particular the writer Jean Genet.
The Goncourt 2022 prize was awarded on November 3 to Brigitte Giraud for live fast. She is the first author to receive the most prestigious French-language literary award since Leïla Slimani with soft song in 2016, and the 13th woman to be honored since Goncourt’s creation 120 years ago.
Source: BFM TV
